DUCORNET, RIKKI — Gazelle

New York, A.A.Knopf. 2003, 1st US Edition. (ISBN: 0375411240) Hardcover. Book, As mesmerizing as a tale from the lips of Sheherazade, Gazelle traces the story of Elizabeth, a thirteen-year-old American girl whose adolescent passion is awakened in the exotic climate of 1950s Cairo. While her mother"whose beauty and sexual prowess both frighten and fascinate Elizabeth"moves into a hotel to pursue a string of lovers, her father, a historian, loses himself in a world of chess and toy soldiers. Elizabeth's imagination, primed by an explicit edition of The Arabian Nights, leads her to fantasies about her father's friend, a gentle, older man named Ramses Ragab, a perfume maker who visits their house regularly to play games of war and who opens her up to the mystery of hieroglyphics and the art of exotic scents.189. New/New.