Midnight in Cairo Paperback by Raphael Cormack

Product Details

• Publisher: WW Norton (2022-07-26)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 384 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781324021933
• Item Weight: 306.18 grams
• Dimensions: 8.23 x 5.45 x 0.92 cm

A vibrant portrait of the talented and entrepreneurial women who defined an era in Cairo.

One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry—as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry.

Raphael Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newspapers); nightclub singer Mounira al-Mahdiyya (the first woman to lead an Egyptian theater company) and her great rival, Oum Kalthoum (still venerated for her soulful lyrics); and other fabulous female stars of the interwar period, a time marked by excess and unheard-of freedom of expression. Buffeted by crosswinds of colonialism and nationalism, conservatism and liberalism, “religious” and “secular” values, patriarchy and feminism, this new generation of celebrities offered a new vision for women in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

About the Author

Raphael Cormack is an award-winning editor and translator and has written on Arabic culture for the London Review of Books and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.