Book Review: Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher

Book Review: Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher
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Updated 01 August 2024
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Book Review: Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher

Book Review: Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher

Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher is a captivating historical novel that transports readers to the captivating world of 19th-century Egypt. The story follows the life of Asma, a young woman who finds herself caught up in the turbulent events of the time. 

Set in the Ottoman era, the novel opens with Asma living a quiet life in the remote oasis town of Siwa, tending her family’s date palm grove and dreaming of a life beyond the confines of the desert. However, her world is upended when she is forced to flee Siwa and take refuge in the bustling city of Cairo. There, she encounters Mahmoud Abul Ala, a charismatic revolutionary who draws her into the growing resistance movement against the occupiers. 

As Asma becomes more deeply involved in the fight for Egyptian independence, she must grapple with the ethical complexities of the conflict and the personal sacrifices it demands. Taher masterfully weaves together Asma’s intimate personal journey with the larger historical forces at play, creating a richly textured narrative that explores themes of identity, duty, and the human costs of political upheaval. 

One of the novel’s strengths is its vivid and immersive depiction of 19th-century Egypt. Taher’s meticulous research shines through in the book’s attention to historical detail, from the bustling markets of Cairo to the harsh beauty of the Saharan desert. Readers are transported to a bygone era, surrounded by the sights, sounds and customs of a world that feels both familiar and exotic. 

Asma is a complex and compelling protagonist, whose personal transformation mirrors the larger societal changes unfolding around her. As she navigates the treacherous political landscape, she is forced to confront her own beliefs and loyalties, as well as the realities of power, violence and the limits of resistance. 

“Sunset Oasis” is a masterful work of historical fiction that offers readers a nuanced and thought-provoking exploration of a pivotal moment in Egypt’s past. Taher’s lyrical prose, richly drawn characters and keen eye for historical detail make this a captivating and deeply satisfying read. Whether you are a fan of literary fiction, historical novels or simply a lover of compelling storytelling, this book is sure to leave a lasting impression. 

The original Arabic version of the novel, “Wahat Al-Ghurub,” was published in 2007. In 2009, the English translation, “Sunset Oasis,” was published and made available to international audiences. 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Have Willpower’

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Updated 18 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Have Willpower’

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  • In the spirit of the best ancient self-help writing, Plutarch, a pagan Greek philosopher and historian, offers a set of practical recommendations and steps we can take to resist pressure and to stop saying “yes” against our better judgment

Authors: Prudentius and Plutarch 

Edited and translated by Michael Fontaine

“How to Have Willpower” brings together two profound ancient meditations on how to overcome pressures that encourage us to act against our own best interests—Plutarch’s essay On Dysopia or How to Resist Pressure and Prudentius’s poetic allegory Psychomachia or How to Slay Your Demons. 

Challenging the idea that humans are helpless victims of vice, these works—introduced and presented in vivid, accessible new prose translations by Michael Fontaine, with the original Latin and Greek texts on facing pages—emphasize the power of personal choice and the possibility of personal growth, as they offer insights and practical advice about resisting temptation.

In the spirit of the best ancient self-help writing, Plutarch, a pagan Greek philosopher and historian, offers a set of practical recommendations and steps we can take to resist pressure and to stop saying “yes” against our better judgment. And in a delightfully different work, Prudentius, a Latin Christian poet, dramatizes the necessity to actively fight temptation through the story of an epic battle within the human soul between fierce warrior women representing our virtues and vices.

 

 


Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’

Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’
Updated 17 July 2025
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Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’

Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’
  • Kalanithi, an American neurosurgeon, talks about his own journey from being a physician to becoming a patient himself facing premature mortality

Published a year after the author’s death aged 37 in 2015, “When Breath Becomes Air” is an autobiography about the life and struggle with terminal lung cancer of Dr. Paul Kalanithi.

In the book, Kalanithi, an American neurosurgeon at Stanford University, talks about his own journey from being a physician providing treatment to his patients to becoming a patient himself facing premature mortality.

The narrative moves from talking about how Kalanithi saved lives to confronting the end of his own, reflecting on what makes life worth living in the face of death.

Despite his diagnosis, Kalanithi continued working as a physician and even became a father, explaining to his readers how he embraced life fully until the very end.

Unfortunately, the book had to be completed by his wife after his passing, and serves as a moving meditation on legacy, purpose, and the human experience.

Among the book’s strengths are its authenticity and depth of emotions, touching on everything from the day-to-day experiences of physicians to Kalanithi’s own love of literature — originally, he had studied English at university. A fitting tribute, then, that his own work would go on to become a New York Times’ bestseller.

Neurosurgery, though, was in his words an “unforgiving call to perfection” which not even his diagnosis could check. “Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when,” he wrote. “After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when.”

The book garnered praise upon publication, winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir and Autobiography in 2016. Its run on the NYT’s bestseller list lasted an impressive 68 weeks.

Writing in the Guardian, Alice O’Keefe suggested: “The power of this book lies in its eloquent insistence that we are all confronting our mortality every day, whether we know it or not. The real question we face, Kalanithi writes, is not how long, but rather how, we will live — and the answer does not appear in any medical textbook.”

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’
Updated 17 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’

Author: Steven A. Balbus

General relativity has entered a new phase of its development as technical advances have led to the direct detection of gravitational radiation from the merging of single pairs of stellar-sized black holes. The exquisite sensitivity of pulsar signal timing measurements has also been exploited to reveal the presence of a background of gravitational waves, most likely arising from the mergers of supermassive black holes thought to be present at the center of most galaxies. This book demonstrates how general relativity is central to understanding these and other observations. 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez
Updated 16 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones.

In “How to Change a Memory,” Ramirez draws on his own memories—of friendship, family, loss, and recovery—to reveal how memory can be turned on and off like a switch, edited, and even constructed from nothing.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘In The Brain, In Theory’

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Updated 16 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘In The Brain, In Theory’

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  • Engineering is the use of knowledge to solve technical problems, to build an artifact with a plan

Author: ROMAIN BRETTE 

“In The Brain, In Theory,” Romain Brette argues that the brain is not a “biological computer” because living organisms are not engineered.

Engineering is the use of knowledge to solve technical problems, to build an artifact with a plan. Brette reviews the main theoretical frameworks for thinking about the brain, including computation, neural representations, information, and prediction, and finds them poorly suited to the study of biological cognition.

He proposes understanding the brain as a self-organized, developing community of living entities rather than an optimized assembly of machine components.