La librera de El Cairo

Nadia Wassef always wanted to be a bookseller. Twenty years ago, she, along with her sister and her best friend, founded Diwan, a bookstore in her native Cairo. They were three young women, with no formal education, no experience, and nothing to lose. At that time, there were still no bookstores in Egypt. Culture was sinking under the mismanagement of a corrupt government, and books were considered a luxury, not a necessity. The Cairo Bookstore, with its eclectic cast of endearing characters, transports us to a city that transcends its own history, and allows us to witness its slow but daring transformation away from an archaic, misogynistic and corrupt system. Like The Yacobian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany, at the time, this book allows the protagonists and their little stories to build the soul of the Egyptian capital.