Egypt Tourism: Recommended Books & Films

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Recommended Books & Films

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Books -- Egypt has always held a special fascination for writers and artists, and there's no shortage of materials to immerse yourself in before your departure. Foreign writers have been trying to capture the kaleidoscope that is Egypt for thousands of years. One of the most fascinating accounts came from Herodotus (ca. 490-425 B.C.), whose collection of Histories is the grand-daddy of travel writing. Although most of the compilation deals with his observations in other countries such as Persia, Greece, and Ethiopia, Book II on Egypt is priceless.

A slightly more updated travelogue is Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari, about a harrowing overland trip from Cairo to Cape Town. You might also want to check out Gustave Flaubert's collection of letters during his licentious travels through Egypt in 1849-1850, published by Penguin as Flaubert in Egypt.

Foreign writers who have set their fiction in various periods in Egyptian history include Lawrence Durrell, whose acclaimed but dense Alexandria Quartet is a classic depiction of European hedonism by the seaside in the 1940s. For a less pedantic exercise, check out Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile mystery novel which was later made into a star-studded movie with Peter Ustinov as the famous detective Hercule Poirot, and Mia Farrow, Jane Birkin, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury and David Niven as his hapless suspects.

Egypt also has a large stable of local writers. A good one to start with is Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel-prize winning author of The Cairo Trilogy , the Journey of Ibn Fattouma and more than 30 other novels. Mahfouz' nuanced but often dragging depictions of Egyptian society in the 19th and early 20th century give a realistic glimpse of a period that was crucial in defining modern Egypt.

The critically acclaimed Ahdaf Soueif is a more contemporary novelist, who resides in London and writes in English about upper class Egyptians caught between East and West. Her latest novel The Map of Love was short listed for the prestigious Booker Prize.

For some searing social commentary, check out Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, Egypt's leading feminist of the 20th century who has often been targeted by the government and Islamic fundamentalists for her work.

Films -- Egypt's movie industry is a well-oiled machine that churns out most of the Arab world's films and soap-operas, the majority of which is forgettable commercial fluff. Egypt's best-known director Youssef Chahine is an exception, whose 1950's black-and-white classic Cairo Station portrays a group of newspaper and soda vendors living in poverty at the railway station. To see Egypt portrayed in foreign movies to varying degrees of accuracy, rent the highly entertaining Death on the Nile , based on the mystery novel by Agatha Christie (see above), Cleopatra - starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison -- or The Spy Who Loved Me, starring Roger Moore as James Bond.

Music -- The most widely listened to Egyptian music falls into two categories. First, there is classical Arabic music consisting of slow, dramatic ballads popularized in the 1950s, 60s and 70s by legendary singers like Um Kalthoum, Mohamed Abdel Wahab and Abdel Halim Hafez. The best collection of such music is available on a CD called Cafe Cairo released by Virgin Records.

Since the 1980s, a more contemporary form of pop music has emerged, taking advantage of Oriental melodies, Western rythms and the range of sounds offered by technology. The beats of this music are uplifting and infectious. For the more "upscale" form of pop known as Al-Jeel (the generation), check out anything by Amr Diab, Hisham Abbas or Mohammed Mounir. For the more subversive but wildy successful "street pop," check out Hakim or Ahmed Adawiya.

Note that there's also a genre of fusion music pioneered by Arabs living abroad that weaves Western and Eastern elements in almost equal measure, creating a very appealing and unique sound. Although most of this music comes from Algerian and Moroccan immigrants living in France, it serves as a good introduction to Middle Eastern rythms and instrumentation. Check out the compilations Arabic Groove, Desert Roses and Arabesque.

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Egypt Tourism: Recommended Books & Films

Recommended Books & Films

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