Told through the voices of a group of close friends and spanning a generation, Smiles of the Saints is an epic story condensed into a short, intricate novel. Twenty-year-old Hanin has just returned to Egypt after an absence of fifteen years spent mostly in a Parisian boarding school, cut off from all family save for sporadic visits from her father, Rami. She has been summoned back by her father's twin sister, who gives her an envelope containing his diaries, the last section of which is missing. Reading Rami's account of the passionate love affairs and tortured spiritual adventures of his youth, Hanin begins to unravel the riddle of a family she has barely known.
Herself the child of a Muslim-Christian marriage, Hanin, in love with a Jewish man, is considering adding a further religious dimension to her family. But someone is carefully watching the proceedings a figure from the past who was once deeply involved with Hanin's family. Who exactly is this, and what stake does he have in Hanin's return?
Couched in a pervasive air of mystery, Ibrahim Farghali's novel is ripe with resonant observations on the complexities of human entanglements.
