The Day the Leader Was Killed

Set in Anwar al-Sadat's Egypt, this novel relates the tale of a middle-class Cairene family, narrated alternately by the pious and mischievous family patriarch Muhtashimi Zayed, his hapless grandson, Elwan, and Elwan's headstrong and beautiful fiancee, Randa, culmiating with the assassination of Sadat on October 6, 1981, an event around which the fictional plot is woven. Reprint.