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Title details for The Egyptians by Jack Shenker - Available

The Egyptians

A Radical History of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution

by Jack Shenker
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The award-winning journalist and longtime Cairo resident delivers a “meticulous, passionate study” of the ongoing battle for contemporary Egypt (The Guardian).
 
On January, 25, 2011, a revolution began in Egypt that succeeded in ousting the country’s longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. In The Egyptians, journalist Jack Shenker uncovers the roots of the uprising and explores the country’s current state, divided between two irreconcilable political orders. Challenging conventional analyses that depict a battle between Islamists and secular forces, The Egyptians illuminates other, equally important fault lines: far-flung communities waging war against transnational corporations, men and women fighting to subvert long-established gender norms, and workers dramatically seizing control of their own factories.
 
Putting the Egyptian revolution in its proper context as an ongoing popular struggle against state authority and economic exclusion, The Egyptians explains why the events since 2011 have proved so threatening to elites both inside Egypt and abroad. As Egypt’s rulers seek to eliminate all forms of dissent, seeded within the rebellious politics of Egypt’s young generation are big ideas about democracy, sovereignty, social justice, and resistance that could yet change the world.
 
“I started reading this and couldn’t stop. It’s a remarkable piece of work, and very revealing. A stirring rendition of a people’s revolution as the popular forces that Shenker vividly depicts carry forward their many and varied struggles, with radical potential that extends far beyond Egypt.” —Noam Chomsky

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 3, 2017

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781620972564
      • File size: 2891 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781620972564
      • File size: 3450 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from October 15, 2016
      A sharp jab at the neoliberal economics adopted by Egypt over the last decades, which ultimately spurred grass-roots revolt.Was it actually revolution, or was it a convulsive moment buried now in the status quo? In his debut book, London- and Cairo-based British journalist Shenker, the former Egypt correspondent for the Guardian, gets at the deep economic forces that allowed Egyptian dictators from Anwar Sadat to Hosni Mubarak to transfer resources from the poor to the rich and essentially become "a land of minority accumulation and majority degradation." While Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to instill reform by defeating feudalism and imperialism, the pact he sealed with the people ensured their exclusion from politics. His successor, Sadat, introduced liberalizing reform that fit "neatly with a global trend away from state oversight of the economy and toward a model in which capital would be free to move without regulation"--what essentially became the neoliberalism propounded by Milton Friedman and implemented disastrously in Chile and other Latin American countries. Shenker skillfully breaks it all down, showing how the move toward privatization created a highly centralized, undemocratic system of governance aided by the global financial community, offering little accountability and allowing a few "nepotistic clusters" to get rich while leaving the rest struggling and impoverished--conditions ripe for revolution. Yet the military now rules again in Egypt and has driven the revolution underground and invisible--or so it would seem. Shenker provocatively explores ways and places ("tenuous little zones") where the ancien regime has no more legitimacy and where cracks of resistance grow larger--e.g., villages demanding self-mastery, women pushing back against sexual violence, laborers striking for fair wages, graffiti artists and emerging writers working against the state, and, overall, a bold refusal to give in to fear of the state police. A troubling yet highly engaging catch-up on the state of incomplete revolution in Egypt.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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