David Balderstone’s eye-witness account of the events surrounding Egyptian President Nasser’s death in 1970 and the subsequent rise to power of Anwar Sadat is interspersed with the observed but partly fictional story of the lives of local people. This is a record of Egyptian society and politics in the early 1970s, with colourful descriptions of life on the streets of Cairo and Luxor. It clearly shows the determination of the Egyptian leadership to achieve a military capacity with which to win back Sinai, and an eventual separate peace with Israel. In reflecting on the Free Officers’ Movement that brought Nasser to power in 1952 and the relative lack of politicisation of the local populace before the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the account provides an illuminating contrast to events in the Middle East today.