Flaubert was 27 when he set off on his tour of "the Orient" in partnership with a close friend, Maxime du Camp, late in 1849. He went against the wishes of his widowed mother who nevertheless financed him and was absent from his home in Rouen for a year and a half until his money ran out. The Egyptian travels formed only a stage in this itinerary he and du Camp also travelled in Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece and Italy. Egypt, however, was the core experience of the whole venture and his movements there are also the best documented, since he kept a travel diary and also wrote to his mother and to friends. From boyhood on he had dreamed of Oriental colour and luxury, although the reality was often squalid and the boatmen and camel drivers who accompanied him up and around the Nile were not figures of romance. The great monuments of Egypt's past were mostly half buried in sand, official corruption was the norm rather than the exception, and poverty was abject yet Flaubert absorbed a range of impressions and colours which lasted him all his life. He also, true to his tastes and principles, patronised prostitutes and courtesans, including the famous Kuckuk Hanem, who danced for him.
Not all the writing is Flaubert's own do Camp, an ambitious man of letters had a travel book in mind and set down his own impressions and a good deal of factual information. Francis Steegmuller (who died in 1994) has already used much of the material for his edition of the novelist's letters, but this is a far more coherent narrative which places the various episodes in proper context and perspective.