The Arrogant Years - by Lucette Lagnado (Paperback)

About the Book

"[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.

Book Synopsis

"[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.

From the Back Cover

In the follow-up to her beloved, bestselling The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Lagnado tells the story of her mother, Edith, coming of age in a magical old Cairo of dusty alleyways and grand villas. Then Lagnado revisits her own years in America--as a schoolgirl in Brooklyn's immigrant enclaves, where she dreams of becoming the fearless Mrs. Emma Peel of The Avengers, coming of age in the turbulence of New York City's 1970s, and, later, as an "avenging" reporter for some of America's most prestigious newspapers. Not only a searing account of strangers in a strange land, The Arrogant Years is a lasting "meditation on exile and assimilation, feminism and the enduring ties of family." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Review Quotes

Praise for The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit "Beautifully written.... A great personalized telling of Egypt's complicated history in the last half of the 20th century." - Fareed Zakaria
"Stunning memoir...a deeply affecting portrait of her family and its journey from war-time Cairo to the New World. Like André Aciman in his now classic memoir, 'Out of Egypt' (1994), she conjures a vanished world with elegiac ardor and uncommon grace, and like Mr. Aciman she calculates the emotional costs of exile with an unsentimental but forgiving eye....Writing in crystalline yet melodious prose, Ms. Lagnado gives us an indelible gallery of family portraits..." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"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." - The New Yorker
"The resilient dignity of Lucette's family transcends the fiercest of obstacles." - Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A moving tale of exile...it is the splendid achievement of "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit" that it does not stop at being the loving evocation of a family that it indubitably is. Ms. Lagnado has also given us a timely and important reminder about the unwillingness of Arab nationalism to tolerate non-Arab communities... full of sentiment, information and wisdom...deeply affecting." - Washington Times
"From Pashas to paupers, from the alleyways of Cairo to the working class streets of Brooklyn, this epic family saga of faith and fragility showcases Lucette - nicknamed Loulou by her family--as a budding contrarian in her alien New World." - Jewish Woman Magazine, Book of the Month
"This moving follow-up [to The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit] revolves around Lagnado and her mother, both of them battling their fates and coming of age in times of social change." - New York Times Book Review, Paperback Row
Praise for The Arrogant Years: "You don't have to be Jewish to take this entrancing literary ride. It begins peacefully in exotic Egypt, but political turmoil and savage anti-Semitism uproots the family to find refuge in America. Here the author, Lucette Lagnado--slim little kid, with a vivid imagination and adventurous spirit--confronts dull male orthodoxy and vapidity, which she overcomes with her own outrageous theology. 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
"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
"[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)
"[E]nchanting...It's risky to write a second memoir about the same time period, but in Lagnado's hands, the result feels natural and right. She skillfully reminds us that a single human life is infinitely complex, that there are as many sides to a story as times it is told." - New York Times Book Review
"[A] taut and moving memoir...With a journalist's economy of style and an intuitive sense of story, [Lagnado] weaves an account of her own arrogant years.... [A] meditation on exile and assimilation, feminism and the enduring ties of family." - San Francisco Chronicle
"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
"This second volume of Lagnado's autobiography richly deserves the same splendid recognition that greeted The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. The two books eloquently capture the troubled experiences of those Egyptian Jews who came to the United States by vividly recounting what happened to one burdened family - South Florida Sun Sentinel
"Affecting...[an] affectionate, engaging memoir." - Boston Globe
"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
"[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
"[Lagnado makes] the vital point that there can be many perspectives on the same story....affecting...[an] affectionate, engaging memoir." - Boston Globe
"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 traces her mother's heartbreaking trajectory from the Pasha's library in King Farouk's Cairo to the confines of a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, where she tries to reconstruct her vanished home. If doing so proved impossible for the persevering Edith, Lagnado's memoir, at once an elegy to a parent and to a country, comes close." - Dalia Sofer, author of THE SEPTEMBERS OF SHIRAZ
"Lyrical...[Lagnado's] memoir is a fully fleshed, moving re-creation of once-vibrant Jewish communities." - Publishers Weekly
"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
"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
"[Lagnado] is a gifted storyteller who spins ordinary family experiences into enchanting fairy tales, complete with magical backdrops (the streets of Cairo, New York, and Montreal), nasty villains and dashing heroes...Her descriptions of places, particularly in Egypt, are vivid and evocative...It's a delight to read about the author as an impish, spirited child ...tender and heartfelt." - Kirkus Reviews
"[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 Reviews