Cairo: My City, Our Revolution
Ahdaf Soueif
Cairo: My City, Our Revolution
Ahdaf Soueif — novelist, commentator, activist — was born and brought up in Cairo. When the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 erupted on January 25th, she, along with thousands of others, called Tahrir Square home for eighteen days. She reported for the world's media and did — like everyone else — whatever she could. Here Soueif navigates her history of Cairo and her journey through the Revolution that's redrawing its future. Through a map of stories drawn from private history and public record Soueif charts a story of the Revolution that is both intimately hers and publicly Egyptian.
3.6 out of 5 based on 4 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Society, Politics & Philosophy, History |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
256 |
| RRP |
£14.99 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0747549628 |
| Publisher |
Bloomsbury |
| |
Ahdaf Soueif — novelist, commentator, activist — was born and brought up in Cairo. When the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 erupted on January 25th, she, along with thousands of others, called Tahrir Square home for eighteen days. She reported for the world's media and did — like everyone else — whatever she could. Here Soueif navigates her history of Cairo and her journey through the Revolution that's redrawing its future. Through a map of stories drawn from private history and public record Soueif charts a story of the Revolution that is both intimately hers and publicly Egyptian.
Reviews
The Evening Standard
Tom Porteous
“In this book, as elsewhere in her journalism, Soueif's novelist's eye and humanism help us to understand that Egyptians, Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs are just as angry about the routine and flagrant abuses of their rights as any other people would be. Thus her work provides an urgent antidote to the prevailing stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims, which for decades have helped sustain the West's naive assumption that political support for torturing regimes and tolerance of human rights abuses in the Middle East have no consequences.”
09/02/2012
Read Full Review
The Independent
Louisa Young
“Bursts of lyricism, poetry and love illuminate the factual account and political commentary, and it works beautifully.”
27/01/2012
Read Full Review
The Spectator
Anthony Sattin
“The larger and more successful part of the book is an account of Soueif’s involvement in the protests ... [it] is vivid and emotional: it might move you to tears at the heroism of the protestors and is likely to incite you to anger at the stupidity, duplicity and savagery of the authorities ... The second narrative thread in this book, the ‘other half’, records Soueif’s reconnection with the place of her birth ... Because of her absence [from Egypt], the personal reminiscences that punctuate the book are from another time ... Some are evocative, some filled with longing. But there are not enough of these moments to create a significant personal landscape, or a memoir of the city. Happily that doesn’t detract from the importance of this description of the heady moments leading to the downfall of Mubarak.”
21/01/2012
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Yasmine El Rashidi
“... I find myself wondering if this really is her definitive Cairo book, or if there is yet another one, a deeper one, a more nuanced one — the book that she had been struggling with, and that she alludes to, and that lies somewhere on a hard-drive or in a drawer unfinished. I find myself still wanting to know more about this lyrical Cairo of hers of which we catch only fleeting and compelling glimpses.”
11/02/2012
Read Full Review