تأتي الرواية على شكل يوميات كُتبت في القرن التاسع عشر في القاهرة، وتعود لمصور فوتوغرافي ومحقق جنائي يدعى «سليمان أفندي السيوفي»، وصف من خلالها تفاصيل تحقيق كلف به للتقصي حول مصرع أحد الباشوات بطريقة شنيعة، ليكتشف أسرار غامضة ومحيرة.
The life of an expatriate is a journey of pain and happiness, loss and discovery, success and disappointment. It is a painting in which contrasting colors, very dark and very bright, clash. The life of an expatriate is a journey whose end, according to plan, is a return to the mother’s embrace, the mother who carried him and watched over him as a child, and the homeland mother that contains all his previous memories, but it often ends with the end of the expatriate before the end of the journey or with the end of the mother. This book presents stories of the life of an expatriate that are almost identical to reality, and carry within them all those emotions that we mentioned at the beginning, and it has a tendency toward presenting the condition of the expatriate without adding the usual touch of romanticism, as it is, and without exaggeration or frills.
في زحمة الحياة، وضوضاء الأصوات، وإزدحام الصُّور، كثيراً ما نسمعُ من يقول: "ليتني أملكُ كوخاً على قمةٍ جبلٍ أعيشُ فيه... على إنفراد"، هرباً من المشاغل والمشاكل،
