The government of Egypt banned Inside Egypt in 2008--the first time a book on Egyptian politics had been banned in the country in decades--and quickly rescinded it after the media firestorm that followed.
Most experts believe that in the next year or so, Hosni Mubarak will step down and that his son, Gamal is the favorite to take the reins. In Inside Egypt, John Bradley examines the junctions of Egyptian politics and society as they slowly disintegrate under the twin pressures of a ruthless military dictatorship at home and a flawed Middle East policy in Washington.
“Bradley’s books suggests Egypt’s rupture had clear omens . . . and was promptly banned by the Mubarak government.” --The New Yorker
“This dark and sober look at contemporary Egypt . . . offers a compelling explanation for the anger now being seen on the streets of Cairo.” --The Christian Science Monitor
“Terrifically well told and extremely sobering” --Kirkus
“In this highly readable and thoughtful volume, Bradley provides a devastating critique of Egypt’s current dictatorial government.”--Library Journal
“An interesting and eye-opening look into the minds of the average Egyptian.”—The Oklahoman
“Insightful and eye-opening…a must read for anyone interested in Egyptian politics.”—The Daily News, Egypt
"Inside Egypt is an original, angry, brilliant, subtle, and highly readable expose of contemporary Egyptian politics and society."--Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know
"Egypt is the next domino to fall and, as they say, so goes Egypt so goes the Middle East. John R. Bradley hits the nail on the head, explaining why a pillar of American dominance in that part of the world is about to crumble." --Robert Baer, former Middle East-based CIA operative, author of See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil
Praise for Saudi Arabia Exposed: "A highly informed, temperate, and understanding account of a country that. . . is an enigma."--The New York Times "Contributes substantially to the debate."--Los Angeles Times "[A] thoughtful, incisive portrait of a fractured nation….a remarkable volume."--Newsweek
"The book is a devastating critique of almost every aspect of Egyptian governance since 1952... A must read for anyone interested in Egyptian politics." --The Daily News
"An interesting and eye-opening look into the minds of the average Egyptian." --NewsOk.com
About the Author
John R. Bradley has written for The Economist, The Washington Quarterly, The Financial Times, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, and Salon. Fluent in Egyptian Arabic, he is the author of the critically acclaimed Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis.
John R. Bradley (johnrbradley.wordpress.com) was born in England in 1970. He was educated at University College London, Dartmouth College in the United States, and Exeter College, Oxford.
Between 1998 and 2010, Bradley was based in the Middle East. Fluent in Arabic, he is the author of four books on the region that draw heavily on his personal experience: Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), a Foreign Affairs bestseller; the critically acclaimed Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; reprinted in January 2011 in an updated edition with the subtitle The Road to Revolution in the Land of the Pharaohs), which uniquely and accurately predicted the Jan. 25 Cairo uprising; Behind the Veil of Vice: The Business and Culture of Sex in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and After the Arab Spring: How the Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Bradley's essays, dispatches, reviews, and op-eds have appeared in many publications, including: The Washington Quarterly, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Salon, The London Telegraph, The London Daily Mail, The Forward, The London Evening Standard, The Jewish Chronicle, The Spectator, The New York Post, The London Sunday Times, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Independent, The Washington Times, Newsweek, Asia Times Online, Prospect, and The Economist.
He has been interviewed about the Middle East by CNN, the BBC, PBS, NPR, CBS, Fox News, Al-Jazeera English, Sky News, Channel 4 News, Bloomberg TV, and many other media outlets. And he has participated in public debates at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Intelligence Squared in London, and The Pacific Council for International Affairs in Los Angeles.
I bought Inside Egypt because I greatly enjoyed John R. Bradley's previous book Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), and also because I have been living in Cairo for the past 14 months learning Arabic and there's no other book on contemporary Egypt out there. Inside Egypt is creating quite a buzz here in Cairo: you can't pick up an Arabic-language newspaper (the independent ones not run by the government, anyway) without finding a profile of the author and/or a review of the book. It has the same qualities that I liked about Saudi Arabia Exposed: a clever combination of personal anecdote, original reportage, and brief historical backdrop, and the arguments are made in a very readable prose style (I finished this book in two stints over two evenings). Inside Egypt is aimed at the general reader, rather than scholars and experts, and it paints a very grim picture from the ground up of life here as lived by most Egyptians. Those non-Egyptian readers living here who know poor Egyptians will easily recognize the world Bradley depicts - families living on the bread line, young people desperate to travel abroad, Christians facing persecution, the rise of fundamentalist Islam. But the book also debunks myths by explaining, for example, why the Muslim Brotherhood are not very popular, and unearths some shocking facts about the country's seedy sex tourism underworld - two subjects I've not seen discussed elsewhere. There are chapters on Torture and Corruption, and well as the Sufi and Bedouin minorities, and some cracking interviews with well-known Egyptians like novelist Alaa Al-Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) and Gamal Al-Banna (brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood). Bradley concludes that recent Egyptian history shows there have been popular uprising every three decades or so: the 1919 nationalist revolution, the 1952 revolution led by the Free Officers, and the bread riots of 1977. We are now, he notes ominously, three decades after the last uprising, meaning Egypt is due another, although he has no doubt the regime will be able to crush it. It's a measure of his prescience that in the month the book is published there are were two general strikes and food/price riots...
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Bradley writes like a novelist, from his own situation and point of view, and fortunately is an intelligent and perceptive observer who writes beautifully. We are with him as he travels up and down the Nile, interviews leading figures in the major political and cultural groupings, and shares the situation of the abandoned middle class in this police state on the verge of collapse. The reader gains the benefit of his long residence in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, his fluent Arabic, his talent for friendship and his evident love and sympathy for the people he meets. This is a fine example of a more realistic reporting than we have been used to in recent years, free from the point-counterpoint and shouting of the mass media.
Bradley lets us see Egypt in the light of its recent history. In the break-up of empires, Ottoman and British, a military clique seized the government and established party rule modeled on European dictatorships. The new home-grown dictators destroyed as much as they could of the structure of civil society and the deep religious and cultural diversity of Egypt, which they identified with opposition and a colonial past. They sought to erase history itself. Like the dictators of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, Egypt's rulers slipped steadily into corruption and terror, and are now challenged by a new, Islamist movement that threatens to repeat the cycle of violence and minority dictatorship. The liberal middle class is being steadily destroyed by pressure from both sides: anyone searching for the reason that educated, middle class youth are becoming suicide bombers and soldiers of intifada will find much of the reason in this book. A horrifying chapter on the multi-billion dollar sex tourism industry gives us a vivid sense of the degradation of Egyptian society and the looting of its cultural and natural resources.
This book is required reading. If Bradley has a fault, it is his optimism: he recommends that the United States use its considerable leverage to force a degree of liberalism upon the military rulers of this uniquely important nation, but given the corruption and incompetence that he demonstrates so graphically it is hard to imagine them climbing out of the hole they have been digging for fifty years. Egypt needs the kind of massive rebuilding of infrastructure that has been undertaken in Ireland and the former Soviet Republics. One would think that from his description, only a true peace in the Middle East, instead of the "cold peace" Bradley describes, that would allow the harnessing of oil wealth and the technical expertise of Egypt's neighbors, and a radically new Egyptian government capable of making use of such aid, would seem to meet the need.
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Well, I found this book special as an Egyptian living abroad. The amount of true information of such a book is huge. Although I did not like the author's point of view about the Muslim Brotherhood. The chapter about the bedouins also lacks the depth of the rest of the book.
Other than this, the book is fine, and I totally recommend it for students who are interested in different cultures, and also to the professors of Egyptology, to see how the grandchildren of the builders of the pyramids are lacking even the basic requirements to live an adequate life.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
A short walk from the American University in Cairo, through the bustling downtown streets of Africa's largestā and the Arab world's most populousā capital city, is a shabby little cafe called Al-Nadwa Al-Saqafiya. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
older foreign women, opposition media
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Muslim Brotherhood, United States, Saudi Arabia, Middle East, Upper Egypt, West Bank, Suez Canal, Sharm Al-Sheikh, Mohammed Ali, The Yacoubian Building, Hassan Al-Banna, Red Sea, King Farouk, High Dam, World Bank, Al-Nadwa Al-Saqafiya, Nile Delta, Amnesty International, Egypt Today, National Democratic Party, Abu Omar, Asharq Al-Awsat, Zaki Pasha, Khedive Ismail, Ottoman Empire
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