In the identical vein is Albert Cossery’s “The Colors of Infamy.” A really quick learn, the e-book follows a well-mannered pickpocket and serves as a information of kinds to the dynamics of the town’s historic markets — the swindling, the bargaining, the haggling for a deal. Once you set foot within the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, and even onto the pyramids plateau in Giza, the place you’ll be swarmed with presents for camel rides, horse rides and guides, you might respect having learn this e-book.
What books or authors ought to I convey together with me?
Cairo is characterised largely by its layers of structure — Fatimid, Mamluk, Khedival. But it additionally has a wealthy historical past of recent structure, from turn-of-the-century revivalism to concrete expressionism and modernist design. This contains the homes of iconic cultural figures. The home of the singer Oum Kulthoum has been demolished, however comparable properties by the identical architect, Ali Labib Gabr, nonetheless stand within the neighborhood, together with what was as soon as my grandmother’s home, just some blocks away. This just isn’t a novel, however Mohamed Elshahed’s “Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide” presents an excellent information to this contemporary age and makes for an ideal walking-tour companion, talking not solely of the buildings and their historic significance but in addition of that period.
In fiction, Waguih Ghali’s “Beer in the Snooker Club” is a cult traditional initially written in English that depicts post-colonial Cairo via the eyes of a nationalist, Anglophone aristocrat grappling with a regime change and new socialist insurance policies underneath President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Although it was written in 1964, it additionally tells the story of Egypt now.
At the opposite finish of the category and experiential spectrum throughout that very same political regime is Sonallah Ibrahim’s experimental novel “That Smell.” Published in 1968, it tells the story of a just lately launched prisoner and his malaise as he struggles, and fails, to readjust to on a regular basis life on the surface. There are many days on this fast-changing metropolis that really feel like this novel to me.
If I’ve no time for day journeys, what books might take me farther afield as a substitute?
André Aciman’s essay assortment “False Papers,” for a journey to Alexandria. Born and raised there, Aciman returns a long time after his household left for exile and tries to retrace the town because it existed in his reminiscence. He finds little of it left, however his search captures in vivid element the town as it’s best remembered. His pensive e-book strikes throughout time and geography, from Egypt to Europe, however, even there, it’s nonetheless about Aciman’s Alexandria. To maintain on to that sentiment — the trying and the loss — you need to then learn Constantine P. Cavafy’s “Collected Poems.” The two writers, each born within the historic port metropolis, type an unofficial Alexandrian compendium.
Yasmine El Rashidi’s Cairo Reading List
Novels by Naguib Mahfouz
“In the Eye of the Sun” and “The Map of Love,” Ahdaf Soueif
“Slipping,” Mohamed Kheir
“Cairo: City of Sand,” Maria Golia
“The Colors of Infamy,” Albert Cossery
“Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide,” Mohamed Elshahed
“Beer in the Snooker Club,” Waguih Ghali
“That Smell,” Sonallah Ibrahim
“False Papers,” André Aciman
“Collected Poems,” Constantine P. Cavafy