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From The New Yorker
This memoir of an Egyptian Jewish family’s gradual ruin is told without melodrama by its youngest survivor, now a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Lagnado’s story hinges on her father, "the Captain," who cut a dashing figure in mid-century Cairo, consorting with British officers and Egyptian royalty at French cafés while his family, neglected, stayed home. At first refusing to join the tide of Jews fleeing Egypt under the Nasser regime, the Captain finally yields, in 1963, when the family escapes to Paris and then Brooklyn. Deprived of wealth, status, and any means of coping, Lagnado’s father fades, but he never loses his air of chivalry, manifested in a regular outflow of tiny checks to charitable causes—orphanages, vocational schools, and dowry funds for poor girls—overseas. "As if the Captain were capable of rescuing anyone," his daughter writes.
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Lagnado's captivating account of her family's life in cosmopolitan Cairo and painful relocation to America centers on her beloved father. Dashing man-about-town Leon Lagnado, who kept to his carousing ways even after marrying a beautiful women 22 years his junior, was enraptured at the age of 55 by the author, his fourth child; affectionately called Loulou, she became her father's companion, even at temple services and the Nile Hilton bar. But the Suez war in 1956 and the Nasser regime's cultural holocaust began forcing Jews from their native Egypt. Leon's injury in a fall and Loulou's mysterious illness (first diagnosed as cat scratch fever, eventually found to be something far worse) delayed the Lagnados' departure until 1963, when they arrived in New York with $212, the maximum they were allowed to take out of Egypt; and Leon, once a prosperous, independent businessman and investor, was reduced to selling ties on the street. In Lagnado's accomplished hands, this personal account illuminates its places and times, providing indelible individual portraits and illustrating the difficulty of assimilation. An exceptional memoir. Leber, Michele
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Review
"Lagnado’s richly textured memoir is a loving tribute to a lost man and a lost culture." -- Reform Judaism

Customer Reviews

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An Uplifting Elegy
Lucette Lagnado's Man in the White Sharkskin suit is a lovely and heartfelt elegy to Cairo's Jewish community of the 1940s and early 1950s.

Lagnado's father, a skilled and wealthy merchant and boulevardier, is the last patriarch of the Cairo branch of a distinguished Syrian Jewish clan. After taking a wife some 20 years his junior, Lagnado builds a three-generation family in a romantic Cairo of the years immediately following World War II. In his daughter's hands, this Cairo becomes the stuff of dreams, evoking lavish lifestyles amidst an urban streetscape of rose petal peddlers, produce vendors, seamstresses, synagogues, doctors and mystical healers. Would that we all might experience the beauty of this Cairo. The Lagnado family's place at the epicenter of this remarkable richness sets the tone for Man in the White Sharkskin Suit.

The second half of the memoir sets the Lagnado family afloat, cut from Cairo by the growing anti-Semitism of Nasser's Egypt. Accompanied by nothing other than trunks of beautifully made clothing-- ultimately unused-- the Lagnado clan leaves Egypt for an increaasingly precarious existence in Paris and then Brooklyn.

Many have framed this journey as the depiction of a family collapse. I saw it differently. While the Lagnado family fortune was captured by the Nasser government, leaving the family to emigrate penniless, the indomitable spirit of Lagnado's father continues to shine in France and, ultimately, in America. The Lagnados continue to value their heritage and honor it, more perfectly than not. That Lucette Lagnado so beautifully captures her father in this memoir is a tribute to the indomitability of his spirit, as well as to Cairo's lost Jewish community.

Sentimental, passionate but not totally fair
This is one of many books telling the heart breaking experience of egyptian jews suffering after 1948. It tells about the elegant fascinating life in egypt at that time.
however, it was not fair enough to tell the true status of egyptian jews and the attitude of egyptians toward them.
Before zionist movemnt, Egyptian jews enjoyed very high esteemed position in the society. they occupied high rank status in the government and many of them were successful rich bussiness people. Amazingly to say that more than 35% of big bussiness in Egypt was run by Jews. There were never discrimination neither persectuion against them.
Ironically, there were many zionist offices in Egypt to collect donation and help for poor jews of the world and help jews persecuted in Germany. Evenmore, Haeim Wizman visited Egypt to collect donation and support. The tragedy against jews started when the zionist movement declared frankly to sweep out Palestainian and creat a state by force.
At that moment many jews in Arab world were misjudged as spys to state of israel and as having loyality to israel. Long time agao, there were clubs, magazines, schools, hospitals and many social activities for the jews in Egypt and they enjoyed the highest standards in life.
But everything changed after the evil side of zionizm show its face