Memoir books from Egypt
Recommended memoir books (9)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into memoir here are some memoir books from Egypt for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
1.
Adjusting Sights by Haim Sabato EN
Description:
This book brings us inside the deepest thoughts, fears and feelings of a yeshiva student turned soldier.
2.
Chronicle of a Last Summer : A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi EN
Description:
A young Egyptian woman recounts her personal and political coming of age in this brilliant debut novel. Cairo, 1984. A blisteringly hot summer. A young girl in a sprawling family house. Her days pass quietly: listening to a mother’s phone conversations, looking at the Nile from a bedroom window, watching the three state-sanctioned TV stations with the volume off, daydreaming about other lives. Underlying this claustrophobic routine is mystery and loss. Relatives mutter darkly about the newly-appointed President Mubarak. Everyone talks with melancholy about the past. People disappear overnight.... continue
3.
4.
From the Four Winds by Hayim Sabato EN
Description:
Haim Sabato draws us into his childhood with this evocative rendering of his experiences as a young boy whose family immigrates to Israel in the 1950's, settling in a Ma'abara - a transit camp. He notices his fellow immigrants' concealment of their pasts. He accepts this secrecy, sensing that everything will reveal itself eventually. And this revelation does come, in the form of Farkash, a mysterious, dynamic man who takes Haim under his wing and gradually divulges to him his sorrowful, uplifting story, one that profoundly impacts Haim for the rest of his life...
5.
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal el Saadawi EN
Description:
A young Egyptian woman clashes with her traditional family when she chooses a career in medicine. Rather than submit to an arranged marriage and motherhood, she cuts her hair short and works fiercely to realise her dreams. At medical school, she begins to understand the mysteries of the human body. After years of denying her own desires, the doctor begins a series of love affairs that allow her to explore her sexuality – on her own terms. Written in her twenties when Nawal El Saadawi was studying in Cairo, Memoirs of a Woman Doctor is the searing coming-of-age story of a woman striving for fre... continue
6.
Description:
“I defy any woman to flick through Modestly, through Dina’s musings on bullying, eating disorders, maternity wear, contouring and feminism, and not find something they can relate to” – METRO ‘This is the story of my life. It’s about me as a Muslim Brit embracing dual identities, surviving the turbulent teens and transitioning from self-doubt to self-belief. There is a little bit of drama, lots of laughs, plenty of practical advice and a shedload of bold statements. You can’t get a Muslim woman in a hijab with no opinion, am I right?!' Dina x Guys, get ready. YouTuber and social media sensation... continue
7.
Revolution for Dummies: Laughing through the Arab Spring by Bassem Youssef EN
Description:
“Hilarious and Heartbreaking. Comedy shouldn’t take courage, but it made an exception for Bassem.” --Jon Stewart "The Jon Stewart of the Arabic World"—the creator of The Program, the most popular television show in Egypt’s history—chronicles his transformation from heart surgeon to political satirist, and offers crucial insight into the Arab Spring, the Egyptian Revolution, and the turmoil roiling the modern Middle East, all of which inspired the documentary about his life, Tickling Giants. Bassem Youssef’s incendiary satirical news program, Al-Bernameg (The Program), chronicled the events of ... continue
8.
Shelf Life : Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef EN
Description:
The warm and winning story of opening a modern bookstore where there were none, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller recounts Nadia Wassef’s troubles and triumphs as a founder and manager of Cairo-based Diwan The streets of Cairo make strange music. The echoing calls to prayer; the raging insults hurled between drivers; the steady crescendo of horns honking; the shouts of street vendors; the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she founded Diwan, a fiercely independent boo... continue
9.
Traces of Enayat by Īmān Mirsāl EN
Description:
Cairo, 1963: Enayat al-Zayyat's suicide becomes a byword for talent tragically cut down, even as Love and Silence, her only novel, languishes unpublished. Four years after al-Zayyat's death, the novel will be brought out, adapted for film and radio, praised, and then, cursorily, forgotten. For the next three decades it's as if al-Zayyat never existed.Yet when poet Iman Mersal stumbles across Love and Silence in the nineties, she is immediately hooked. Who was Enayat? Did the thought of her novel's rejection really lead to her suicide? Where did this startling voice come from? And why did Love ... continue