“An ambitious work set against the backdrop of real events, Juliana Maio’s City of the Sun provides a fascinating insight into the events that helped shape the forces at play in Egypt and the Middle East today. This book couldn’t be more timely.”

 

“This book fuses three of my greatest passions: drama, history and the Jewish/Arab conflict. I was tremendously excited to discover City of the Sun – an engrossing, first class historical drama. It’s a goldmine!”

          –Richard Dreyfuss, Academy Award winning actor and founder of the Imagining the Future Fund

 

“What we don’t know about Cairo during World War II turns out to make for an enthralling novel.  Egyptian born Juliana Maio knows this territory like the palm of her hand, which is where she holds us. City of the Sun weaves a tangled tale of espionage, wartime romance, political intrigue, and action in a city crawling with all four.  If you liked Casablanca, this story is for you.”

          –Nicholas Meyer, New York Times Best Seller/ Screenplay Academy Award nominee for The Seven Percent Solution; screenwriter, The Human Stain

 

“Juliana Maio’s City of the Sun belongs in the “one percent” of new novels to read, not only because of the way she weaves suspense to keep you turning pages, but because she has married it all to a fascinating point in World War Two history with Middle East setting descriptions that will have you swearing you’ve been there. The kind of book that turns non-readers into obsessive ones.”

          –Andrew Neiderman, author of The Devil’s Advocate

 

“Juliana Maio’s “City of the Sun” is a vivid novel of Cairo in the early days of the war in North Africa and where café society was all but invented. This is a romantic adventure, rich with spies, Nazis, ever-changing power and international refugees. The reckless events of the story are a distant mirror for the desperate troubles of the Middle East of today. A sexy and dangerous book.”

 

“You feel the sweat on your forehead and smell the scents of the marketplace as you walk the colorful streets of Cairo with Juliana Maio’s vividly-drawn characters. City of the Sun weaves together intrigue, romance, action and danger as American Mickey Connolly races against a fiendishly clever German adversary to locate the Jewish refugee who  may just hold the key to the greatest secret of the war. Maio’s detailed research brings alive the ancient city and creates a vibrant setting for her twisting, racing story. This is historical fiction the way it was meant to be enjoyed—and the way it was meant to be written!”

          –Kelly Durham, author of Berlin Calling and The War Widow

 

“Juliana Maio artfully brings to life a very rich and crucial period in Egyptian history. Her scenes evoke intense emotions about the fragility of love and the cruelty of war, as well as the tragedies of religious persecution. Meticulously researched, this is a beautiful novel full of life that will stay with you long after you’ve read it. In her first foray into writing Maio proves that she has what it takes to be a great novelist.”

          —Alaa al Aswany, author of the international bestseller The Yacoubian Building

 

“City of the Sun” is a marvelous romantic spy thriller set in one of the most cosmopolitan yet exotic cities of its time — Cairo, Egypt, known as the “Paris on the Nile,” a place on the Mediterranean where numerous nationalities and languages mingled and a glittering European-style social life developed, especially among the city’s once substantial Jewish community. In many ways it is a memorial to a world gone by. Set in the fateful year of 1941, when the fate of North Africa and indeed all of World War II hung in the balance, the novel is impeccably researched in both military matters and the details of day-to-day life, allowing us to meet as if in person characters who heretofore have appeared only in history books. A fantastic read from beginning to end — you won’t be able to put it down!

          —Prof. Marianne Sanua Dalin Dept. of History Florida Atlantic University

 

Heliopolis, known in ancient Egypt as the City of the Sun, but now a Cairo suburb, provides the vivid setting for Maio’s debut, a romantic thriller set during the early years of WWII. Gen. Erwin Rommel’s forces threaten Egypt from without, while the growing Muslim Brotherhood threatens the strife-torn country from within. A vacillating young King Farouk and a domineering British presence combine to govern uneasily. Into this roiling mix come American freelance reporter Mickey Connolly and Jewish refugee Maya Levi, who continually cross paths. American ambassador Alexander Kirk and spymaster Bill “Wild Bill” Donovan recruit Connolly to help them locate German refugee physicist Erik Blumenthal, who may be trying to get to Palestine. German spy Heinrich Kesner also seeks Blumenthal. The many historical figures lend authenticity, but it is Connolly and Levi’s romantic entanglement that drives this satisfying exploration of a key time in western and Middle Eastern relations.

 

…City of the Sun is a strong historical thriller that uses real persona and events to anchor a powerful storyline. Readers will feel they are in 1941 Cairo as Juliana Maio provides her audience with a taste of a divided, frightened, yet angry city expecting war. The romantic subplot adds hope and passion in the midst of strife. However, readers will relish the profound look at the early days of the Middle East dispute (interwoven into a superb drama) that still haunts the region and world decades after the end of WWII.

 

Juliana Maio joins the ranks of writers Andre Aciman and Lucette Lagnado, who were born in Egypt and then expelled along with their families during the Suez Crisis of 1956.

 

…An enlightening historical novel, thriller and love story. [Click here to read more.]

 

A love story and intrigue are mixed with historically accurate details to make a story that grabs your attention and keeps you engaged until the end. [Click here to read more.]

          –The New Hampshire Jewish Reporter

 

War book aficionados will be very pleased with this one; however, even if you’re not a military/history buff, this in-depth story is still one of the most interesting and thrilling reads imaginable. [Click here to read more.]

 

Juliana Maio is in love with life and it shows in her debut novel City of the Sun…As you read it and turn the pages, it’s easy to see a Hollywood movie following in the wake of this lush novel. I couldn’t put it down. [Click here to read more.]

          –Dan Bloom for San Diego Jewish World

 

Romance and characters’ personal stories are as important as a political plot, which touches on the fate of the post-WW II world, in this thriller that holds readers’ attention to the very end. Maio’s research is excellent, and the background it provides for present-day events in the Middle East is fascinating. The novel unfolds at a pleasant pace, the characters are sympathetic and Maio effectively uses three viewpoints to tell her story.

          —Romantic Times Book Review

 

As a fan of good historical fiction, I was quite excited to have a chance to read, and then early review for Library Thing, the book City of the Sun, author Juliana Maio’s debut novel. Maio didn’t disappoint. There certainly was the flavor of the movie Casablanca that was promised, but there was also wonderful insight and knowledge about Egypt during World War II. Prior to the war, Egypt had 80,000 Jews living in harmony with the Egyptian Arabs. Jews were an important part of the community, and the various groups worked and lived well together. This novel gives some insight into the way that harmony began to erode, all while telling a wonderful story that will no doubt become a Hollywood movie sometime soon. I had fun wondering which actors would fit well with each of the vividly depicted characters of the book. I strongly recommend this novel, and am looking forward to Maio’s next efforts.

          —LibraryThing

 

Ms. Maio makes it her mission here to educate her readers about wartime Cairo and its pivotal role in the changed and changing Middle East…and she does it superbly…She spices up the telling with two sure bets, an espionage thriller and a romance. And, surprisingly, she handles both with assurance, delivering believability and a couple of really magic scenes. This is a highly diverting and educating piece, and I recommend it. It’s solid history delivered with multi-faceted appeal.” [Click here to read more.]

          —Basso Profundo Book Review

 

When Mickey Connolly, a young American journalist comes to the Middle East to report on the desert war, he is astonished to discover Libyans praising Hitler’s Third Reich and seeing their future as Nazi Germany’s allies. In Cairo, his “home” base, he encounters much of the same attitude, though it’s essentially more anti-English than pro-German. Egyptians had lived under British martial law since 1939, compromising the independence gained in 1936. With Rommel furiously approaching the Egyptian border, Connolly wants to wake up American readers to the facts and significance of this desert war theater. For much of the 1941-2 the time of the novel, the Germans seem unstoppable. [Click here to read more.]

          –Phil Jason for Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier County), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota / Manatee)

 

Egypt in the early 1940’s was a mad house in every sense of the word, with General Rommel’s forces trying to blaze their way across the Sahara into Egypt and take the Suez Canal. While technically the Egyptians were no longer under British rule, England, France, Germany and the United States all had a stake in the mind numbing games being played in the city that was once called “Paris on the Nile”.

          –I love a mystery Book Review

 

Unlike some of her predecessors, rather than pen an autobiographical account of Jews who were forced to leave Egypt, Juliana Maio stages the story of a cosmopolitan, cultural society that was once the envy of the Arab world, set against the background of World War II. [Click here to read more.]

          –Aimee Kligman for WOMEN’S LENS

 

          —Jewish Book Council, BOOK REVIEW http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/city-of-the-sun