Egypt Between Two Eras

Description

Personal Scenes and Chapters: Fleeting glimpses of impressions and reflections spanning fifty years, crowding the author’s mind until he simply and haphazardly poured them onto paper. When Tawfiq al-Hakim wrote his seminal novel “The Return of the Spirit” in 1926—seven years after the 1919 Egyptian revolution—the question on everyone’s mind was: Who is Egypt? And who are the Egyptians? Every writer and intellectual sought to answer this question in their own way and according to their own understanding. Al-Hakim’s answer centered on the search for “the spirit of Egypt.” He was certain that he belonged to a country with a distinct and independent identity, a long history in which its people had long slumbered, and that they would awaken and have the “spirit” that had vanished from him and others beneath the dust of time returned to them. Just as al-Hakim answered this question artistically in “The Return of the Spirit” in 1926, he answered it again intellectually and personally in this book in 1983 through his reflections, impressions, and political memories.

This is a living testament by an Egyptian thinker and creative mind to the history of Egypt and Egyptians in the twentieth century.