In 1937, five-year-old Colette Rossant arrived in Cairo from Paris with her Egyptian Jewish father and beautiful French mother When her father dies Colette's flighty mother abandons the little girl to her wealthy grandparents She soon settles into their luxuriant, food centred lifestyle - spending afternoons in the spice filled kitchen accompanying her grandmother to the bazaar and feasting on the delicious Egyptian food At fifteen Colette is brought back to Paris with her mother, never to see her grandparents again, and only to return to Egypt thirty years later In this memoir, accompanied by mouth watering recipes, she evokes an Egypt lost