--- product_id: 402133238 title: "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World" price: "37961CFA" currency: XOF in_stock: true reviews_count: 5 url: https://www.desertcart.sn/products/402133238-the-man-in-the-white-sharkskin-suit-my-familys-exodus store_origin: SN region: Senegal --- # Global journey: Cairo to Paris to NYC Ranked #224 Jewish Social Studies Historical memoir spanning mid-20th century The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World **Price:** 37961CFA **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 🌟 Unlock a forgotten world — where history meets heart and heritage sparks hope. ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World - **How much does it cost?** 37961CFA with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.sn](https://www.desertcart.sn/products/402133238-the-man-in-the-white-sharkskin-suit-my-familys-exodus) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Deeply Personal & Poignant:** Written with heartfelt intimacy, revealing untold stories of identity, faith, and displacement. - • **A Family Saga of Resilience:** Follow the gripping exodus of a Jewish family navigating upheaval, loss, and hope across three continents. - • **A Vivid Portrait of Old Cairo:** Experience the lost cosmopolitan glamour and vibrant multicultural life before Nasser’s era. - • **A Timeless Reflection on Diaspora:** Connect with universal themes of tradition, tragedy, and triumph that resonate with today’s global professionals. - • **Critically Acclaimed & Bestselling:** Ranked top #250 in Jewish Social Studies with 4.4-star reviews from over 1,100 readers. ## Overview ‘The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit’ is Lucette Lagnado’s acclaimed memoir chronicling her Jewish family's forced migration from vibrant mid-century Cairo through Paris to New York. Blending rich historical context with intimate storytelling, it captures the cultural loss and enduring spirit of a displaced community, earning top ranks in Jewish Social Studies and Middle Eastern History categories. ## Description “Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt . . . ” —Miami Herald In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything, and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind. An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado’s memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph. Review: Frete caríssimo - Não gostei do valor do frete Review: A love letter to a city, and to her father - Lucette Lagnado writes movingly and with genuine affection for the life her family knew in "Old Cairo", especially for the common humanity strangers had for each other. As she says, when her father fell in the street early in the morning on his way to synagogue, he was immediately surrounded by a swarm of people- no one kept on walking if you fell in the street in Cairo. That was the Cairo I knew, when I left in 1970. I confess I bought the book originally because friends, relatives, even near-strangers who had read "The Cairo House," urged me to read "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit," and they were right, even though our backgrounds were so different. I found the book eye-opening and disturbing to many of my assumptions. I didn't realize there were Egyptian Jews, like her father and grandmother, who felt disoriented in Brooklyn or Israel. When I was young, I thought the reason my father, an Egyptian Muslim, never considered emigrating, even if he had been allowed, was that only in Egypt would people know who he was. Later I realized that it was only in Egypt that he himself would know who he was. Perhaps it was the same for the sixty-year-old Leon Lagnado, who had never traveled outside of Egypt before, in spite of his Anglophilia and his francophonia and his boulevardier airs. Neither did I realize that there were Jewish families who were allowed to take only 200 pounds with them when they left after the socialist decrees of 1961. I remember an aunt of mine, severely ill, who had to wait for months for the government to give her permission to travel to England for treatment in the sixties, and then she was allowed only 50 pounds, and was mortified to have to admit to her husband's former agent in London, who had booked her into a fine hotel, that she could not afford to spend even one night there. Lagnado's book is written from the heart, a saga of collected family anecdotes, and there are fuzzy areas where elucidation would have been welcome, but these omissions do not detract from this compelling, touching memoir. At the very end, she returns to Cairo and finds her few points of reference- the flat in Ghamra, the synagogue, Groppi's- dilapidated in dingy downtown Cairo. My old Cairo is gone, as well, my Garden City choking in the overcrowding and noise and traffic and pollution and ugly construction. So I can understand Lagnado's disillusionment. The book left me with a powerful nostalgia to turn back the clock to Cairo's heyday as a diverse, vibrant, open-hearted city, and as Lagnado remarks, in Cairo, in the midst of despair, there is always hope, so as we say, Inshallah. ## Features - Ecco Press ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #224 in Jewish Social Studies #2,423 in Middle Eastern History (Books) #39,025 in Biographies & Autobiographies (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,189 Reviews | ## Images ![The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61KYl8Hf06L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐ Frete caríssimo *by E***S on 27 September 2022* Não gostei do valor do frete ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A love letter to a city, and to her father *by S***N on 30 August 2007* Lucette Lagnado writes movingly and with genuine affection for the life her family knew in "Old Cairo", especially for the common humanity strangers had for each other. As she says, when her father fell in the street early in the morning on his way to synagogue, he was immediately surrounded by a swarm of people- no one kept on walking if you fell in the street in Cairo. That was the Cairo I knew, when I left in 1970. I confess I bought the book originally because friends, relatives, even near-strangers who had read "The Cairo House," urged me to read "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit," and they were right, even though our backgrounds were so different. I found the book eye-opening and disturbing to many of my assumptions. I didn't realize there were Egyptian Jews, like her father and grandmother, who felt disoriented in Brooklyn or Israel. When I was young, I thought the reason my father, an Egyptian Muslim, never considered emigrating, even if he had been allowed, was that only in Egypt would people know who he was. Later I realized that it was only in Egypt that he himself would know who he was. Perhaps it was the same for the sixty-year-old Leon Lagnado, who had never traveled outside of Egypt before, in spite of his Anglophilia and his francophonia and his boulevardier airs. Neither did I realize that there were Jewish families who were allowed to take only 200 pounds with them when they left after the socialist decrees of 1961. I remember an aunt of mine, severely ill, who had to wait for months for the government to give her permission to travel to England for treatment in the sixties, and then she was allowed only 50 pounds, and was mortified to have to admit to her husband's former agent in London, who had booked her into a fine hotel, that she could not afford to spend even one night there. Lagnado's book is written from the heart, a saga of collected family anecdotes, and there are fuzzy areas where elucidation would have been welcome, but these omissions do not detract from this compelling, touching memoir. At the very end, she returns to Cairo and finds her few points of reference- the flat in Ghamra, the synagogue, Groppi's- dilapidated in dingy downtown Cairo. My old Cairo is gone, as well, my Garden City choking in the overcrowding and noise and traffic and pollution and ugly construction. So I can understand Lagnado's disillusionment. The book left me with a powerful nostalgia to turn back the clock to Cairo's heyday as a diverse, vibrant, open-hearted city, and as Lagnado remarks, in Cairo, in the midst of despair, there is always hope, so as we say, Inshallah. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An evocative and moving memoir *by L***N on 24 January 2011* "The man in the white sharkskin suit" was written by a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, so it goes without saying that this is a beautifully written piece of work. Drawing together the memories and recollections of members of her family from before she was born, Lagnado conjures up images of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan Cairo that is apparently now largely lost. She then recounts how the Jewish community in Egypt fell on difficult times, forcing them to fan out across the world. Lagnado ended up in the US, a section of the book that is no less interesting than the Cairo chapters. I very much recommend this book, to anybody really but in particular to those interested in Jewish and Egyptian recent history. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.sn/products/402133238-the-man-in-the-white-sharkskin-suit-my-familys-exodus](https://www.desertcart.sn/products/402133238-the-man-in-the-white-sharkskin-suit-my-familys-exodus) --- *Product available on Desertcart Senegal* *Store origin: SN* *Last updated: 2026-09-28*