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After loving "Stover at Yale", I thought that it would be only fair to read this Harvard book. We'll see how it stacks up...

This book was amazing. The creativity the author showed in creating a world that had risen up from the ruins of North America was on the level of J.K. Rowling. However, this world seemed more plausible to me, because something akin to this could easily happen, after human society does finally cease to exist as we know it. The book also addressed some deep political issues, and combated them, I think. This book was a type of sci-fi that I found to be very realistic and plausible, which made this story much better than if it had been in a completely fantastic world. Overall, I give this book five stars out of five. I look forward to seeing what happens in Catching Fire and Mocking Jay.

The Cairo Trilogy is one long novel, and I'm happy to have made the journey with this family during the decades of 1920' to 1950's. Just having a glimpse of the cultural references, political figures, and how world events were perceived by a particular Egyptian middle class family is very satisfying, and I want to read more Arabic novels. Many, many things I really did not understand about these novels, such as the role of the interior monologues, the contrast in the honorific speech and the unspoken thoughts, etc., but having some context about how the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and what it meant in 1920's and 1930's is certainly riveting.