To this richly textured history, Max Rodenbeck brings a keen eye for telling detail gained from years of wandering Cairo's back streets, chatting in its cafes, and burrowing in its dusty libraries. We are taken from the alleys and hash dens to the saxons of contemporary Cairo, as Rodenbeck explores the stark contrasts: skyscrapers abut ancient tombs and genteel colonial mansions -- and the population, pulled between the cultural poles of Paris and Mecca, struggles with the burden of an incomparably rich past and with serious challenges of the future.
