Through Writers' Eyes: Egypt and The Nile
 Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel Hakim
 Format: Paperback
 ISBN: 978 0 055010 56 9

 Area of interest: Egypt

 Date of first publication: 2007
 Eland publication date: October 1, 2007
 Price: £12.99

     

No land on earth has been so long observed as Egypt, which was attracting awestruck travellers back in the days of Herodotus and Julius Caesar. Then came pilgrims to Sinai, crusaders and Napoleon, followed by the Grand Tourists of the eighteenth century and those less grand with Thomas Cook in the nineteenth. The range of voices gathered here is dazzling: an ancient myth from a papyrus next to Naguib Mahfouz's account of Alexandria, Florence Nightingale describing Abu Simbel side by side with Ahdaf Soueif's description of Sinai. A description of medieval Cairo by Ibn Jubayr walks hand in hand with one of the modern city by the Egyptian thinker, Taha Hussein. Lucie Duff-Gordon sails up the Nile, Edward Lane crawls through a sand-filled temple and Isambard Kingdom Brunel struggles up the cataract above Aswan.

INCLUDES EXTRACTS FROM:
Max Rodenbeck | Anthony Sattin | Ahdaf Soueif | H V Morton | Lucie Duff-Gordon | Florence Nightingale | Taha Hussein | Ibn Jubayr | Naguib Mahfouz | Edward Lane | Penelope Lively