Goodreads asked H. El-Tahwagi:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

H. El-Tahwagi I remember reading and analyzing Rousseau's "Social Contract". I was so fascinated with his version of the "state of nature" that I immediately started thinking about the nature of man. Change is so essenatial in everything we do and in our development. I realized that people are not static, and that there are always two sides of the coin. We have both, a dark and a good side in us. Everything went very quickly then. I immediately came to think of the most essential change in history--namely, the French Revolution. I had always wondered about what young people must have felt like en face the quick and vast overthrow of structures. I felt like I needed to tell the story of some young people from different social standings and their problems back at the time. I chose to tell the story from the point of view of a young woman because women were starting to find their voices amidst the turmoil of the enlightenment. Once I started out, the words just started filling the papers :)

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