On a brief visit to Cairo to support an investigation her fiancé, a Jewish American journalist, has undertaken, Salma is caught up in the machinations of a new, radical Islamist group with a vendetta against her father, a man with his own dark side. A former lover and Islamist, kidnaps her. He forces her to flee with him from Cairo to Aswan in the far south of Egypt. As they navigate the  backroads, Salma, a privileged Egyptian-American, finds herself hiding under a burqa, running desert sandstorms and relying on the goodwill of poor villagers.

A page-turner, Escape to Aswan is not only a political thriller but a dramatic telling of the clashes of culture and class in the Arab world. 

"On a brief visit to Cairo to support an investigation her fiancâe, a Jewish American journalist has undertaken, Salma, the protagonist is caught up in the machinations of a new, radical Islamist group with a vendetta against her father that she and her fiancâe must shed light on to protect her family. However, life becomes complicated when an ex-boyfriend preemptively kidnaps her to save her from this self-same Islamist group to which he belongs but is betraying. Chased by both the extremists and her father's soldiers, they take backroads through the country from Cairo to Aswan where Salma is forced to confront the prejudices she didn't know she had in an Egypt she had not known existed"--