Cairo: The City Victorious - Hardcover

Rodenbeck, Max

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679446516 ISBN 13: 9780679446514

Publisher: Knopf, 1999

Synopsis

A dazzling cultural excavation of one of the world's greatest cities--from its
ancient beginnings, through the heights of medieval splendor, to the present
day--by a gifted writer who has spent much of his life in Cairo.
The seat of pharaohs and sultans, the prize of conquerors from Alexander to
Napoleon, Cairo has never stopped reinventing itself. Even in this century,
as Max Rodenbeck shows us, the city has transformed itself yet again--from
a glamorous European outpost into the nationalistic capital of the Arab world.
And, most recently, we have been witness to contemporary Cairo grappling
with a population explosion that strains every aspect of city life beyond capacity.
From its vantage atop the plateau of Giza, the Sphinx has witnessed it all: forty-
five centuries of a city evolving on the river plain below it. "The Victorious" is
what Arabs call Cairo, and its indomitable spirit still merits the name.
To this richly textured story Rodenbeck brings a keen eye for telling detail,
gained from years of wandering Cairo's markets, chatting in its cafés, and
burrowing in its dusty libraries. From the hashish dens to the salons of
contemporary Cairo, Rodenbeck explores the city's stark contrasts. Ancient
tombs abut skyscrapers and genteel colonial mansions, and the people, pulled
between the cultural poles of Paris and Mecca, struggle with the double burden
of an incomparably rich past and a challenging future.
With wit and an understanding that comes from a deep-seated love of the place,
Rodenbeck brings Cairo to life in all its chaotic beauty. Fusing the excitement of
travel with the stimulation of history, Cairo: The City Victorious is an epic,
resonant work.

About this title

Review:

Every great city deserves a book like this one: a sweeping chronicle by an author whose motives mix passion and bewilderment. Over the course of four and a half millennia, Cairo has eluded all who would try to pin it down, reinventing itself time and again: "It has survived countless invasions, booms and busts, famines, plagues, and calamities." Author Max Rodenbeck, a correspondent for the Economist, moved to Cairo as a 2 year old, and has spent a good portion of his professional life working there. He finds himself repulsed by the crowds and pollution of a late 20th-century megacity, yet drawn by Cairo's ageless vibrancy. Cairo: The City Victorious combines wide-ranging history and first-person travelogue in an unconventional narrative that bounces easily from the present to the past and back again. ("If the story were to loop and tangle and digress," he writes, "well, that too would be in the character of Cairo.") Immersed in Rodenbeck's prose, readers will find themselves feeling at home as they discover (or rediscover) this unique place, its pyramids, and its people. --John J. Miller

From the Back Cover:

Al-Qahira: Her Arab conquerors called her "the Victorious", and over the course of her 5,000-year history Cairo has richly merited the name. The seat of pharaohs and sultans, the prize of conquerors from Alexander the Great to Saladin to Napoleon, Cairo has never ceased reinventing herself.

Max Rodenbeck, a noted journalist who has spent much of his life in Cairo, provides a dazzling cultural excavation of this most ancient and multifaceted of cities -- from its Pharaonic beginnings to its heyday as the most glittering metropolis of the Middle Ages, from its subjugation by the Turks and British to its emergence as the modern capital of Arab nationalism. Whether he is exploring a belly-dance theater or a medieval mosque, a hashish den or a dusty bazaar, Rodenbeck brings Cairo to life in all its chaotic beauty. A remarkable fusion of travel and history, Cairo: The City Victorious is an epic, resonant work.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0679446516
• ISBN 13: 9780679446514
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300