Books on a journey through Cairo, the rise of the animal protection movement and a novel that updates ‘Hamlet’’

The End of Sleep

A Novel

Rowan Somerville

W.W. Norton: 246 pp., $23.95

Fin is a piece of work: an Irish journalist set loose in Cairo on the trail of Skinhead Said, a piratical type with a lair full of priceless antiques and splendid treasures. Fin dreams of breaking the story that will free him from “the reality that his working hours have been spent keeping the expat community abreast of the latest old boys’ cricket match.”

In “The End of Sleep,” Cairo is, in many ways, the most bewitching character: a “chorus of deterioration. . . . Age stood whispering impermanence, calling to Fin that, flawed as he was, insignificant as he was, history was woven out of tiny threads of life like him but that he too would decay and crumble.” Fin’s gauzy hunches and tired ambitions lead him on a romp through its sensuous streets: the smell of apricot tobacco, the taste of properly made baba ghanouj and the feel of purest cotton against the skin.

Undiscovered Country

A Novel

Lin Enger

Little, Brown: 310 pp., $23.99

You tell your children to trust their instincts; you try to make those instincts strong and true. In “Undiscovered Country,” 17-year-old Jesse is learning to trust his inner voice. When he finds his father dead of a gunshot wound in the Minnesota woods, he can’t believe it’s a suicide. What he does know is that his father’s brother was jealous of everything his father had, including Jesse’s mother. Lin Enger does a masterful job of creating the voices in Jesse’s head: the need for revenge, the self-doubt, the childlike desire to make everything right again. “Forgive him?” Jesse thinks. “It wasn’t possible, unless forgiveness was something different, something less than I’d thought it was. . . . There was no button inside of me that I could reach in and press to soften my hardness toward him, temper my hatred of him, calm the clamor in my blood.” This modern-day “Hamlet” comes with a cacophony of ghostly voices and other people’s wars.

For the Love of Animals

The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement

Kathryn Shevelow

Henry Holt: 352 pp., $27.50

In this fascinating history of the animal-rights movement, Kathryn Shevelow captures the unique relationship between the advocates -- such characters as the outspoken 17th century duchess and the 19th century Irish M.P. nicknamed “Humanity Dick” -- and the animals they fought for. She traces the movement’s growth from its roots in the quirky aristocracy to the clergy and the people, showing how compassion became a question of justice. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham captured the new sense of kinship with animals: “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?” Surely, understanding the transformation in our thinking about animals illumines our understanding of human evolution -- from survival to stewardship.

susan.reynolds@latimes.comSusan Salter Reynolds is a Times staff writer.