Deze serie volgt een politieke vluchteling en voormalig Soedanees politie-inspecteur, nu een goedkope privédetective in Caïro, Egypte. De zaken van de protagonist leiden hem naar de duistere krochten van de Egyptische hoofdstad, waar hij politieke intriges en persoonlijke drama's tegenkomt. De verhalen bieden spannende onderzoeken verweven met inzichten in het leven van vluchtelingen en complexe sociale omstandigheden. Lezers kunnen een sfeer vol mysterie en onverwachte wendingen verwachten.
Makana is a former police inspector who fled for his life to Cairo from his native Sudan seven years ago. Down on his luck and haunted by the past, he lives on a rickety Nile houseboat. When the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi hires him to track down a missing person, Makana is in no position to refuse him.
A city divided. A killer on the streets. A past that refuses to be forgotten.
It is 2002 and as tanks roll into the West Bank and the reverberations of 9/11 echo across the globe, tensions are running high on Cairo's streets. Private Investigator Makana, in exile from his native Sudan and increasingly haunted by memories of the wife and daughter he lost, is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl. In a country where honour killings are commonplace and the authorities seem all too eager to turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the perpetrator. He finds unexpected assistance in the shape of Zahra, a woman who seems to share Makana's hunger for justice. Seeking answers in the dead girl's past he travels to Siwa, an oasis town on the edge of the great Sahara desert, where the law seems disturbingly far away and old grievances simmer just below the surface. As violence follows him through the twisting, sand-blown streets and an old enemy lurks in the shadows, Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable as the desert beneath his feet.
A war criminal on the run. A mercenary hunting him down. A man caught in the crossfire. Private Investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. All the dealer can tell Makana is that the piece was smuggled into Egypt by an Iraqi war criminal who doesn't want to be found. The art world is a far cry from the shady streets and dirty alleyways of the Cairo that Makana knows, but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long, he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames.
FINDING REFUGE CAN BE DEADLY. More trouble on the streets of Cairo in a gripping new investigation for 'one of crime fiction's most interesting and sympathetic detectives' (The Times) A severed head washes up on the banks of the Nile. The police turn a blind eye. It is just another victim in a series of ritual killings of refugees. Distracted from his hunt for a missing boy, Makana feels the pull of his Sudanese past and is impelled to seek justice for the murdered emigrants. In the dark heart of Cairo, Makana soon discovers the two cases may be connected in dangerous and unexpected ways.
Makana is a breath of fresh air, filled with humanity and empathy . . . An electrifying, psychological thriller, one that will keep you guessing right to the very last page New York Journal of Books