“[Lagnado writes] in crystalline yet melodious prose.”
—New York Times
Lucette Lagnado’s acclaimed, award-winning The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (“[a] crushing, brilliant book” —New York Times Book Review) told the powerfully moving story of her Jewish family’s exile from Egypt. In her extraordinary follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age tragically interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16. At once a poignant mother and daughter story and a magnificent snapshot of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, The Arrogant Years is a stunning work of memory and resilience that ranges from Cairo to Brooklyn and beyond—the unforgettable true story of a remarkable young woman’s determination to push past the boundaries of her life and make her way in the wider world.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“The Arrogant Years [is] a paragon of memoir writing, a story about the complex swirl of people and events and forces out of which individual lives are made — some, like Ms. Lagnado’s, more painfully, but also more fully, than others.” (New York Times )
“Lagnado is at her best when she plumbs her own psyche to sort out her life’s ups and downs…a rewarding journey.” (Washington Post)
“Lagnado is a gifted storyteller who spins ordinary family experiences into enchanting fairy tales, complete with magical backdrops...nasty villains and dashing heroes…. Vivid and evocative...tender and heartfelt.” (Kirkus)
“Lyrical…[Lagnado’s] memoir is a fully fleshed, moving re-creation of once-vibrant Jewish communities.” (Publishers Weekly )
“You don’t have to be Jewish to take this entrancing literary ride…. The Arrogant Years is a lovely book, sad and hilarious by turn, written with love of life, and an enormous affection for language. You will love it too.” (Malachy McCourt, New York Times bestselling author of A Monk Swimming)
“In the radiant presence of Lucette Lagnado herself--and in The Arrogant Years, her moving and unsparingly revelatory second memoir… we have honesty as purity of style, and lucidity as burning emotion, and history as an enduring hymn to resilience.” (Cynthia Ozick)
“[The Arrogant Years] focuses on [Lagnado’s] mother, Edith, and her coming of age in Cairo, and then her own childhood in Brooklyn. Lagnado, who now works for The Wall Street Journal, traces the parallels between the two in this immigrant story.” (New York Post)
“[A]ffecting…Lagnado writes with great affection and compassion for her mother, and she describes displacement and the urgency of memory. Readers... of Sharkskin will again be moved…. It is also a portrait of awe-inspiring caregiving by a loving daughter.” (Jewish Week)
“With precision and searing honesty, Lucette Lagnado writes in The Arrogant Years about her torn allegiances as both an Egyptian Jew growing up in America in the 1960s and ‘70s and the youngest daughter of unhappily married parents.” (O, The Oprah Magazine)
“Weaves together the life stories of several women in a way that will resonate with readers of any ethnicity…Lagnado’s done a fabulous job, again, of transporting us to a multi-ethnic Cairo that no longer exists. That alone is worth the price of admission.” (Library Journal)
“A frank and searching chronicle of lost and found dreams… Lagnado is spellbinding and profoundly elucidating in this vividly detailed and far-reaching family memoir of epic adversity and hard-won selfhood.” (Booklist (starred review))
“[Lagnado’s] writing is tinged with a sense of loss.” (Jewish Woman magazine )
From the Back Cover
The author of the award-winning The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit—hailed by the New York Times book review as a “crushing, brilliant book”—returns with this, the extraordinary follow-up memoir
In The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Lucette Lagnado offered a heartbreaking portrait of her father, Leon, a successful Cairo boulevardier who was forced to take flight with his family during the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, and of her family’s struggle to rebuild a new life in a new land.
In this much-anticipated new memoir, Lagnado tells the story of her mother, Edith, coming of age in a magical old Cairo of dusty alleyways and grand villas inhabited by pashas and their wives. Then Lagnado revisits her own early years in America—first, as a schoolgirl in Brooklyn’s immigrant enclaves, where she dreams of becoming the fearless Mrs. Emma Peel of The Avengers, and later, as an “avenging” reporter for some of America’s most prestigious newspapers. A stranger growing up in a strange land, when she turns sixteen Lagnado’s adolescence is further complicated by cancer. Its devastating consequences would rob her of her “arrogant years”—the years defined by an overwhelming sense of possibility, invincibility, and confidence. Lagnado looks to the women sequestered behind the wooden screen at her childhood synagogue, to the young coeds at Vassar and Columbia in the 1970s, to her own mother and the women of their past in Cairo, and reflects on their stories as she struggles to make sense of her own choices.
About the Author
Lucette Lagnado is the author of the critically-acclaimed Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, a memoir of her Egyptian-Jewish father; in this much-anticipated new memoir she explores the world of her Egyptian-Jewish mother Edith. She is also the coauthor of Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz. She is a senior special writer and investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She resides with her husband, Douglas Feiden, in Sag Harbor and New York City.
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Product details
Publisher : Ecco / HarperCollins; First Edition (September 6, 2011)
Language : English
Hardcover : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0061803677
Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 1.29 x 9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #2,938,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1,484 in Jewish Biographies
#28,384 in Women's Biographies
#83,631 in Memoirs (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars (195)
