One of Egypts greatest contemporary writers reflects on life and loveThis haunting memoir written ten years before alGhitanis death weaves together a series of vignettes in a style that mimics the uneven discontinuous nature of memory itself.These fragments are summoned from across the span of a singular lifetime. We read of his childhood adventures his erotic awakenings his time as a political prisoner and his reports from the battlefront in Iraq and the corridors of power in Syria. Vivid passages capture fleeting glances of strangers through car windows flavors and scents of delicacies savored dreams and sorrows of neighbors in the apartment blocks of Cairo before Nasser as well as chance conversations at points of transit in cafs on elegant streets and with unnamed paramours.These memories and alGhitanis musings on memorys own finitude and mutability make Traces both a memoir and a meditation on memory itself in all its inscrutable workings and inevitable betrayals.