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Dreamers Of The Day
Dreamers Of The Day
Aug 13, 2025 9:48 AM

Author:Mary Doria Russell

Dreamers Of The Day

'I am sure of this much: my little story has become your history. You won't really understand your times until you understand mine...'

Reeling from the aftermath of the twin tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, diffident schoolteacher Agnes Shanklin has taken the trip of a lifetime: to Egypt and the Holy Land. But her arrival at Cairo's Semiramis Hotel coincides with an event that will change history. For the year is 1921 and the Cairo Peace Conference is about to preside over nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East. At first Agnes acts as a welcome sounding board for the historic players - Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Lady Gertrude Bell among them - poised to invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and so decide the fate of the Arab world. Yet as the tumultuous days pass, she attracts the attention of a charismatic German spy and is inexorably drawn into the duplicitous, dangerous world of geopolitical intrigue...

As enlightening as it is entertaining, this compelling, passionately felt novel casts brilliant and perceptive light on what lies behind so many of today's headlines.

Reviews

A brilliant writer...warm, wise and wonderful

—— Karen Joy Fowler

I know and admire The Death of Grass. It was published at roughly the same time as The Day Of The Triffids. In my judgement, it is by far the better book. The characterisation is better and the mood uniformly cold. It is a thrilling and sensible work

—— Brian Aldiss

Gripping ... of all science fiction's apocalypses, this is one of the most haunting

—— Financial Times

Hoffman's gift is to see how much of the mundane, how much of the everyday, is predicated upon a subtle, yet pervasive, sense of the magical

—— Scotsman

Its realism, combined with a refreshing lightness and its success in portraying emotion with empathy, draws the reader into a deep involvement with the book's appealing yet flawed characters

—— Economist

The Third Angel is brilliantly crafted, deeply moving, and utterly enchanting. I loved these characters for their complexity, their unpredictability and for the way they showed subtle and shifting nuance in human nature. One of the best things about Alice Hoffman's writing is that she grounds you in detail and also frees your imagination to soar to places it has never been - often simultaneously. Reading her is immensely satisfying - and addictive!

—— Elizabeth Berg, author of THE DAY I ATE WHATEVER I WANTED

In this elegant and stunning novel, veteran heartstring-puller Hoffman (Here on Earth; Seventh Heaven) examines the lives of three women at different crossroads in their lives, tying their London-centered stories together in devastating retrospect.

—— Publisher's Weekly

A genius ... Elusive, delicate but lasting

—— Alan Ayckbourn

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

—— Christopher Hitchens

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

—— Ben Schott

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

—— Adele Parks

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

—— Simon Callow

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

—— Joseph Connolly

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry

The handsome bindings are only the cherry on top of what is already a cake without compare

—— Evening Standard
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