Gustave Flaubert transformed French literature and caused an outcry when his novel Madame Bovary, portrayed a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, was published in 1857. This extract is from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour, a reconstruction of his formative journey to Egypt as a young man, beautifully portraying his sense of wonder and decadent surrender to the sensual delights of nineteenth-century Cairo.