Poor is the story of a life of hardship, adversity, and emotional starvation. It is also the story of opportunities squandered and hopes traded away for nothing. Idris Ali’s confessional novel begins on an unbearably hot August afternoon in downtown Cairo, where the Nubian narrator has just decided, once and for all, to end his life. He seeks to expunge his failed life in the Nile: the river that had been the lifeblood of his country for millennia, and that—with Egypt’s new dam—now drowns Nubia.