Fiction review: The End of Sleep

New Yorker

The End of Sleep, by Rowan Somerville

In this madcap picaresque, we follow Fin, an Irish journalist, as he spends a day in the streets of Cairo pursuing a story of buried treasure that he believes will restore his floundering career at an English-language newspaper there. Fin seeks a “pacy linear narrative with obvious and satisfying climaxes,” but Somerville leads us, instead, down numerous back alleys and side streets, with frequent breaks for mint tea.

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