Down the Nile Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff

by Mahoney, Rosemary

• ISBN13: 9780316019019
• ISBN10: 0316019011
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: Back Bay Books

Summary

When Rosemary Mahoney, in 1998, took a solo trip down the Nile in a seven-foot rowboat, she discovered modern Egypt for herself. As a rower, she faced crocodiles and testy river currents; as a female, she confronted deeply-held beliefs about foreign women while cautiously remaining open to genuine friendship; and, as a traveler, she experienced events that ranged from the humorous to the hair-raising--including an encounter that began as one of the most frightening of her life and ended as an edifying and chastening lesson in human nature and cultural misunderstanding. Whether she's meeting Nubians and Egyptians, or finding connections to Westerners who traveled up the Nile in earlier times--Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert among them--Mahoney's informed curiosity about the world never ceases to captivate the reader. "A pilgrimage about pilgrims and holy places that is not only enlightening but also very funny." -Paul Theroux (on The Singular Pilgrim ) "Mahoney is a wonderfully effective catalytic agent: she goes to Ireland and just makes the country happen around her." -Jonathan Raban (on Whoredom in Kimmage ) "Mahoney, who has been rowing for 10 year, brilliantly juxtaposes an account of her own palm-blistering hours on the Nile....with the diary entries of two Victorian travelers-Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale." -- Lisa Fugard , New York Times Book Review

Author Biography

Rosemary Mahoney is the author of The Early Arrival of Dreams, a New York Times Notable Book in 1990; Whoredom in Kimmage, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in 1994; A Likely Story: One Summer with Lillian Hellman; and The Singular Pilgrim: Travels on Sacred Ground. She has received a Whiting Writer's Award.

Table of Contents

The River That Flows the Wrong Way	p. 3
Aswan	p. 21
The First Small Boat in Egypt	p. 49
The Cataract Islands	p. 67
At Elephantine	p. 88
Hoda and the Women	p. 103
Not Floating but Flying	p. 118
Maritime Etiquette	p. 136
A Night at Silwa	p. 160
Luxor	p. 180
A Boat of My Own	p. 194
Alone	p. 214
Fear Afloat	p. 234
Bibliography	p. 271
Acknowledgments	p. 275
Reading Group Guide
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