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In conversations with 58 Cairo cab drivers, this entertaining novel is a street-level and street-smart portrait of the City on the Nile. Each chapter is a character sketch, no two alike, though there is a theme that runs through most of them - the near impossibility of making a living driving a taxi in this crowded and chaotic metropolis. Each man has a story to tell, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious. Taken together they are a lament for the country's economic problems, the undependability of government, and the frustrations of dealing with law enforcement and a vast bureaucracy that seems unable to operate without the payment of bribes at every turn.

The quality of life, as observed by the men behind the wheel, is on a steady trend downward, and often their personal lives are cause for a yet additional string of grievances. Wives complain; children are intractable. The narrator encounters, cynicism, despair, rage, fatalism, faith finally in a just and protecting God. Meanwhile, relief from chagrin comes in the form of humor, as we listen in on an exchange of political and sexual jokes while drivers wait in a long queue at a petrol station. And on rare occasions there's a man who has achieved a kind of beatific peace with it all. If social and political realities are to be found beyond the limited vision of news coverage, this is the place to look.