See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in Egypt.
Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
Death on the Nile | Agatha Christie | 265,692 | 9,033 |
Cleopatra: A Life | Stacy Schiff | 118,005 | 4,427 |
Crocodile on the Sandbank | Elizabeth Peters | 74,954 | 4,623 |
Mummies in the Morning | Mary Pope Osborne | 23,349 | 9,152 |
River God | Wilbur Smith | 41,153 | 3,208 |
Nefertiti | Michelle Moran | 39,323 | 1,882 |
The Curse of the Pharaohs | Elizabeth Peters | 24,542 | 2,753 |
Palace Walk | Naguib Mahfouz | 20,266 | 2,822 |
Egypt has obviously been a source of fascination to Western writers for centuries, though not always in a good way. Death on the Nile is entirely set in Egypt, but not a single Egyptian character is actually named. Elizabeth Peters has done well out of our collective obsession with the country. At least an actual Egyptian writer makes the top eight, with Palace Walk, by Nobel laureate Mahfouz.
Disqualified because less than half of the book is set in Egypt: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (which I hated); The Red Pyramid and The Throne of Fire, by Rick Riordan; The City of Brass, by S.A. Chakraborty (which I loved); and The Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
Next up: the Democratic Republic of Congo.
India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan