King Farouk came to the throne in 1936, at the tender age of 16. The young monarch’s rule was to the be the last in a dynasty that had run this ancient land since 1805 – a relatively short time span beneath the long shadow of Giza’s pyramids.
Melekper Toussoun’s account is a history told from the inside, as someone who was part of that final dynasty. In a country whose history is fascinatingly complex and tumultuous, theirs was a family at centre stage, buffeted by joys and tragedies as intense as any that had gone before. They held the helm until the monarchy was toppled in a coup d’état in 1952 – a coup d’état that would probably not have taken place had the young king not suffered an accident that affected the neuronal pathways in his brain.
Toussoun’s evocative and highly personal narrative is a window into a secret garden. At its core is the story of the young monarch, and the account pivots on one central event that was to change everything – Farouk’s car accident on a country road in 1943.
Revolutionary insight into the medical condition that changed the very personality of the young king.
A rebuttal of the racist and colonially motivated British propaganda of the ‘veiled protectorate’ over Egypt.
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About the Author
Melekper Toussoun spent her early childhood in Cairo and at the age of 14 moved to spend a year with her aunt, Emine Toussoun, in Washington DC. She went ono to join her mother, step-father and younger brother in Rio de Janeiro. There she completed her schooling, moving to live in Paris at 21, where she became a French citizen and has resided ever since. After a period working in the hotel business she became a trilingual interpreter (French-English-Portuguese) at the agency for the “Programme d’invitation des personnalités d’avenir” at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.