Kamila Shamsie in The Telegraph:
The pleasure you will derive from The End of Sleep by Rowan Somerville is directly related to your willingness to embrace exuberance as the primary tone in a novel. Rowan Somerville’s debut is awash with it. Almost nothing happens in a muted way – not the sipping of tea, not the drive through Cairo’s streets, and certainly not any act of eating food.
Fin, the Irishman who leads us through this story, has an in-between relationship with Cairo. He has been there too long to be a tourist, but not long enough to cease being an outsider. He is at the stage when a traveller takes on the air of propriety that comes with a slightly more than superficial encounter with a place, while every utterance still serves to underscore his alienness.
More here.