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 traveller, 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 travelled 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.

About the Author
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

Reviews
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 *
Sensuous and richly textured writing and an eye for vivid and startling details * NEW YORK TIMES *
Utterly frank; sometimes rather scary; often extremely witty, brave and revealing in its generalizations; and above all essentially kind * Jan Morris *



Book Information
ISBN 9780316019019
Author Rosemary Mahoney
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Little, Brown & Company
Publisher Little, Brown & Company