Jean Naggar - Something about Jean

With Jean Auel at East of Eden Writers Conference in California, 2009

SIPPING FROM THE NILE: My Exodus From Egypt

A Selection of Happy Readers' Reviews:

The poetry of the words pulled me in, and I was soon immersed in this journey to worlds now lost to us. Truly beautiful.

An intimate look into a time and place and life of an unusual Jewish family in Egypt. Fascinating, lovely and poetic.

Wonderfully clear-headed memoir, written with humor, sensitivity, and a clear eye, telling a well-know story about people forced to leave everything behind, lucky to escape with their lives, and strong enough to rebuild. It speaks of the strength of family ties in good and bad times, and it is most of all a fantastic read.

Sublime! This is one of the most beautiful stories I have read. It deserves a place among the great nostalgic tales of lost worlds: Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past", "The Cherry Orchard", etc.
Melancholy, sensitive, it evokes a way of life that was, and is no more. The descriptions are elegant, and filtered through the innocent eyes of a young girl: the love of those who populated her world, the beauty of the surroundings and rituals, and finally...the loss of it all.
Read it slowly, lovingly: this is a story to be savoured.

This is a superb book. Mrs. Naggar is a gifted writer. Her expressive use of words is true art and literature. I love it so much I sent this to a friend. I just had to share. This book represents the quality that makes reading a joy.

I so enjoyed reading the journey of Ms Naggar's life. It is a wonderfully written book that I would so love to see as a film or PBS series. I could taste the food. I could feel the joy. I could feel the tension. Marvelous, absolutely marvelous book. I am so grateful to Ms Naggar for sharing her story. It is not only entertaining, it is educational and indeed a reminder of miserable times we should never forget that further strengthen us in ways we do not realize. I highly recommend this lovely book.

I found the book extremely well written. the choice of words exactely as it should be to make you fully understand the feelings , the situations,the loss of a wonderful life,the loss of people the author loved the description of places, countries , even the sight and the smells, and obviously, the whole atmosphere. The author has the fantastic capacity, with her words, to transport you, in the situation.

At 3AM I finished the last page of SIPPING FROM THE NILE. This book was perhaps the most beautifully written family memoir (not soapy or melodramatic) I've ever read. Ms. Naggar's memories of her family (past and present) were so vivid that I felt that I was a family friend privileged to visit. The history of Jewish Egypt was riveting. I read this book on my Kindle and it was the first time I ever highlighted passages of a book I've read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is part of a family (aren't we all?).

Superbly written. One of the best books I have ever read. Visualization superb. Can't recommend sipping from the nile highly enough.

An engaging and informative book, Jean Naggar's Sipping from the Nile offers the pleasures both of a historical novel and of a mémoire. It presents her life as she remembers it, dense with extraordinarily vivid details of architecture, cuisine, clothes, furnishings, rich interiors redolent with her own childhood memories. But it is also a detailed portrayal of a tempestuous period in the history of the Middle East in general and Egypt in particular. Her personal story covers approximately two decades, the 40s and 50s, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1956 a landmark and a caesura. But by introducing parents, aunts and uncles, grand parents and great grand parents she traces the family's presence in Cairo back to 1750 and their earlier history back to the 15th century when Spain expelled its Jews in 1492. She has created her own remembrance of things past including the tastes and smells of spices in traditional dishes. The reader can touch and taste and smell what is evoked in these pages and share the author's vivid sense of loss. Read and savor and enjoy!

I found Sipping from the Nile a totally engaging and evocative tale of real life and real people in an exotic and disappearing environment. The authenticity of the authorial voice is strong and engaging, taking the reader down back alleys and boulevards, both literally and figuratively. The place, the people, the experiences are all stunning. The opportunity to visit with several generations of the author's family---to observe the river of family alongside the river of the land--was a journey unto itself. Ms. Naggar is a most astute observer of her world, and a skilled artisan of language. The pleasure of her imagery flows on in my mind weeks after closing the book: the foods, the aromas, the colors, the textures, the sounds, the love all play through my head on endless repeat, and I wallow in it. The next time I will read it much more slowly, and stay longer in her sadly vanished world

Fascinating. Compelling. Lush language and imagry, a vivid picture of place and time and experiences far beyond anything I've known, yet I was there, in the moment, entranced. It drew me into the pages and wouldn't let go. "Sipping from the Nile" is more than a memoir; it's a celebration of life, a song of of courage and hope, an example of the true meaning and power of family. I loved it

I highly recommend :Sipping from the Nile".It is a book I could not put down.Beautifully written,it reflects the life of a young Jewish girl brought up in Egypt.The traditions and atmosphere of that time are carefully and accurately described and it is the most incisive picture of Egypt since the Laurence Durrell books.

I felt as though I had stepped foot in Egypt and walked the very path and life Naggar had. Her words are beautifully crafted and I enjoyed this beautiful memoir of her childhood and life in one of the world's most gorgeous and historic lands.

While the story is remarkable, the quality of Ms. Naggar's telling of the story uniquely sets this book apart and above She described special foods in such detail I could almost taste them. Scenes, fabrics, colors, smells, temperatures... they are all wonderfully and creatively described for the reader's enjoyment and understanding. This is not one woman's story but rather the stories of many people within and surrounding her life and ancestors. Do not miss this great read! I'm sharing my copy with a "bookish" friend tonight!

Absolutely riveting! It is a wonderful glimpse into what Egypt was like, and also an excellent view of how things changed, and the hardships people faced that most people probably aren't aware of. If you have visited Egypt, it will be a trip down memory lane in many respects, but also so eye-opening to learn what it was like living there. Things we as tourists didn't see necessarily. If you have an interest in history, this is a must read! I highly recommend it, and will be hoping to find more works by Jean Naggar!

An EXCELLENT read! I really really loved this one! I couldn't put it down to go to bed! I was transported to Egypt in the early 20th century. The sights, sounds, smells, etc were all so real. The description of the home life, fashions, day to day living, everything was great. I would re-read again and again

This is a marvelous memoir of a lush, magical world and lifestyle that ended abruptly with the Suez Crisis. Reading about the life Jean Naggar's extended family lived and she so beautifully details brought back feelings of wonder I last had as a child, engrossed by fairy tales. But aside from the joy of discovering an exotic, unfamiliar, charmed world,the themes that run through this memoir--family love and ties, the beauty of traditions that bind us together, the pain of loss, and the marvel of human resilience make this more than a memoir of a lost Egyptian childhood. They make it a meaningful, exquisitely written, and, despite its uniqueness, universal, very human, story

This book is so much more than a personal memoir; it shows history and humanity through the eyes of a curious little girl. This wonderfully written tale is enthralling from beginning to end.

Something about Jean

About the Author:

Jean Naggar's poetry has appeared in The Listener and Athanor and she has been published in The New York Times, the Village Voice, Publishers Weekly, and Writers Digest.
Before establishing the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc., in New York City in 1978 (www.jvnla.com) she worked as a book reviewer, writer, translator and editor. Naggar is the agent for Jean Auel's Earth's Children series as well as the works of Mary McGarry Morris, Phillip Margolin, Nancy Willard, Sarah Waters, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Carl Safina, Linda Pastan and others.
Naggar is a former president of the AAR (Association of Authors Representatives), and has been the keynote speaker at many writers conferences throughout the US.
She lives in Manhattan with her husband Serge. She has three children, two children-in-law, and seven grandchildren.

SOME EARLY REVIEWS:

Praise for Jean Naggar's
SIPPING FROM THE NILE: My Exodus from Egypt
To purchase, please visit the website www.sippingfromthenile.com
and click anywhere on the jacket.

Jane Isay
Author: Walking On Eggshells
Every once in a while, a book comes along that opens a world the reader has never imagined. Sipping from the Nile is such
a book. I read it some months ago, and I still can't get it out of my mind. It tells, with clarity and love, the story of a young
girl growing up in Egypt, in a wealthy and influential Sephardic Jewish family. It's a world I never thought existed: a big
family with international ties, a cosseted childhood, a different kind of religious observance, and a modern Exodus. From
power to exile in the life of one brilliant and sensitive young woman. Wow!

Chronogram Magazine
In prose as densely woven and vivid as an oriental carpet . . .
this poignant tale of loss and renewal evokes a vanished world.

Anne LaFarge
8 Taconic newspapers: The Constant Reader
The nicest thing parents and grandparents can do for future generations is to tell the family story. If you're lucky, granny is a
writer and can tell the family story with eloquence, as New York literary agent Jean Naggar has done in her memoir....her
book is a gift to her children and theirs...and to all of us as well.

Sybil Steinberg
former senior editor of Publishers Weekly
Fascinating Memories of a Vanished World
Memoirs of people who have been expelled from their homelands tend to be anguished recollections of severed lives. The
magic of Jean Naggar's vivid and lyrical memoir of her family's life in Egypt before their expulsion during the 1956 Suez
crisis lies in her loving evocation of a privileged childhood in a halcyon time. Sipping From the Nile [offers] beautifully
detailed descriptions of a sun blessed world.... The history of Naggar's ancestors in Europe and the Middle East is
fascinating, a modern day account of the Diaspora as experienced by Jews who cleaved to ancient ways even as they were
model citizens of alien cultures in which they prospered and to which they were loyal. When the blow falls, it is as swift and
disorienting as the actual events that swept the author's family to the four winds of Europe and America, but she does not
dwell on painful details. Instead, she celebrates the bonds of family traditions, religious rituals and close knit
relationships that were her legacy from her forebears and that she will leave to her own children and grandchildren. Readers will take from this beguiling book a sense of lives well lived, challenges faced and an inbred strength to surmount life's
difficulties.

Jana McBurneyLin
Author, My Half of the Sky
Naggar grew up in Egypt in the kind of fairytale existence we only dream of: surrounded by caring extended family, living
in a mansion with cooks and servants and dressmakers, constantly hearing a handful of languages and understanding them
all, never wanting for anything. Naggar's "ivory tower" started crumbling in 1956 with the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
Jews were suddenly the target of hate. All they wanted now, after centuries of building a successful livelihood in Cairo, were
exit visas to someplace safe. A fascinating and poignant peek into a past we don't hear much about...

Paul Preuss
Author, Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime series, Secret Passages, and Core
Sipping from the Nile is a richly evocative memoir .....It brings to life an astonishing cast of reallife
characters and a centuries-old culture . . . [A] perspective not only personal but deeply empathetic . . . Jean Naggar['s]...skills as a writer funny, powerfully descriptive, able to recreate a setting or a character in a few precisely chosen details were a revelation.
Illustrated with vivid photographs, this is a memoir, and a historical record, unlike any other.

Marilyn Baer
I highly recommend Sipping from the Nile. It is a book I could not put down. Beautifully written, it reflects the life of a
young Jewish girl brought up in Egypt.The traditions and atmosphere of that time are carefully and accurately described and
it is the most incisive picture of Egypt since the Laurence Durrell books.
Helene E. Awad
Sipping from the Nile ... recreates beautifully the peaceful and grandiose lifestyle that few Egyptians enjoyed before the
Revolution. Mrs. Naggar manages through a very personal and sophisticated style to transport us eagerly in a world that
could have been otherwise too personal to include the reader. Thank you for a wonderful read that echoed a lost past.

Linda L. Shuler
Author of She Who Remembers, The Voice of the Eagle, and Let the Drum Speak
Fascinating. Compelling. Lush language and imagery, a vivid picture of place and time and experiences far beyond anything
I've known, yet I was there, in the moment, entranced. It drew me into the pages and wouldn't let go. Sipping from the Nile
is more than a memoir; it's a celebration of life, a song of of courage and hope, an example of the true meaning and
power of family.
I loved it!

Sarah Laurence
Literary agent Jean Naggar has written a beautiful memoir. Her story is of a lost world of Sephardic Jews in Egypt. Biblical
history repeated itself when the Jews once more had to flee Egypt. She was eighteen when shots rang out in Cairo. Before
expulsion, Naggar and her extended family lived in a palatial home overlooking the silvery Nile River.... Her childhood
tasted of ripe mangoes, smelled of jasmine and sounded like the U.N. [With] ... rich detail, Naggar spins a soothing tale of a
happy childhood in a loving family. Her words flower and bloom like the lush gardens.

Gerald Bregman
Marvelous Family Reminiscence of Another Place