Dreamers Of The Day

'I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling, even to me. Nevertheless, I am sure of this much: my little story has become your history. You won't really understand your times until you understand mine . . .'Forty years old and reeling from the twin tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, charming, diffident schoolteacher Agnes Shanklin has come into a modest inheritance; enough to allow her to take the trip of a lifetime, to Egypt and the Holy Land.But her arrival at Cairo's Semiramis Hotel coincides with an event that will change history. The year is 1921 and here, for a few days, the Cairo Peace Conference will preside over nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East.Neither a pawn nor a participant, Agnes becomes a welcome sounding board for the historic players - Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Lady Gertrude Bell among them - poised to invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan and so decide the fate of the Arab world - and of our own. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and towards a personal awakening.As enlightening as it is entertaining, Mary Doria Russell's compelling, passionately felt new novel illuminates both the rich history of the Middle East and what lies behind today's headlines.