Overview

The 1919 anti-colonial revolution is a key moment in modern Egyptian history and a historical reference point in Egyptian culture through the century. This book offers a close reading of a wide range of novels, films, plays and memoirs that feature this momentous historical event. By examining canonised as well as neglected works, Dina Heshmat highlights the processes of remembering and forgetting that have contributed to shaping a dominant imaginary about 1919 in Egypt, coined by successive political and cultural elites. Informed by concepts of class and gender, this book brings out a number of issues that underlie the memory of 1919 in Egypt, as it is constantly evolving by ongoing social, cultural and political struggles. As the author seeks to understand how and why so many voices have been relegated to the margins, she reinserts elements of the different representations into the dominant narrative. This opens up a new perspective on the legacy of 1919 in Egypt, inviting readers to meet the marginalised voices of the revolution and to reconnect with its layered emotional fabric.

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9781474458368

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Reviews

"Dina Heshmat offers astute analyses of a broad array of creative works, verbal and visual, that have served both to consecrate and canonize Thawrat 1919 as a nationalist triumph, and to interrogate that narrative of unity and class concord. Alternative voices articulate this historical 'moment' or 'space' instead as a longer, multi-strand, fragmented set of routes: of exuberance and anger, resistance and celebration and carnival, reminding us that revolutionary moments - and their memorialization - are complex communal events.-- ""Marilyn Booth, Oriental Institute and Magdalen College, University of Oxford"""

Author Information

Dina Heshmat, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature, the American University in Cairo.

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