Contemporary Authors

• Marikana: A Report from South Africa Zed Books (London, England), 2015
• The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution New Press (New York, NY), 2016

1. The Egyptians : a radical history of Egypt's unfinished revolution LCCN 2016027141 Type of material Book Personal name Shenker, Jack, author. Main title The Egyptians : a radical history of Egypt's unfinished revolution / Jack Shenker. Published/Produced New York ; London : The New Press, 2016. Description xii, 538 pages : map ; 22 cm ISBN 9781620972557 (hardcover : alk. paper) (e-book) CALL NUMBER DT107.88 .S4364 2016 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER DT107.88 .S4364 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. The Egyptians : a radical story LCCN 2015463419 Type of material Book Personal name Shenker, Jack, author. Main title The Egyptians : a radical story / Jack Shenker. Published/Produced London : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2016. Description 528 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm ISBN 1846146321 (paperback) 9781846146329 (paperback) Links Contributor biographical information https://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1614/2015463419-b.html Publisher description https://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1614/2015463419-d.html Shelf Location FLM2016 151823 CALL NUMBER DT107.88 .S44 2016 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

• Jack Shenker Home Page - http://www.jackshenker.net/about/

  1. The Egyptians : a radical history of Egypt's unfinished revolution

  LCCN
  2016027141
  Type of material
  Book
  Personal name
  Shenker, Jack, author.
  Main title
  The Egyptians : a radical history of Egypt's unfinished revolution / Jack Shenker.
  Published/Produced
  New York ; London : The New Press, 2016.
  Description
  xii, 538 pages : map ; 22 cm
  ISBN
  9781620972557 (hardcover : alk. paper)
  (e-book)
  CALL NUMBER
  DT107.88 .S4364 2016
  Copy 2
  Request in
  Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms
  CALL NUMBER
  DT107.88 .S4364 2016 CABIN BRANCH
  Copy 1
  Request in
  Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE
  2. The Egyptians : a radical story

  LCCN
  2015463419
  Type of material
  Book
  Personal name
  Shenker, Jack, author.
  Main title
  The Egyptians : a radical story / Jack Shenker.
  Published/Produced
  London : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2016.
  Description
  528 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
  ISBN
  1846146321 (paperback)
  9781846146329 (paperback)
  Links
  Contributor biographical information https://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1614/2015463419-b.html
  Publisher description https://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1614/2015463419-d.html
  Shelf Location
  FLM2016 151823
  CALL NUMBER
  DT107.88 .S44 2016 OVERFLOWJ34
  Request in
  Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)
  3. Platinum

  LCCN
  2015494830
  Type of material
  Book
  Personal name
  Larkin, Jason, 1979- photographer.
  Main title
  Platinum / Jason Larkin & Jack Shenker.
  Published/Produced
  Johannesburg : Fourthwall Books, 2015.
  Description
  1 booklet (unpaged, 21 cm), 4 folded posters (50 x 42 cm folded to 25 x 21 cm) : colour illustrations ; in folder 26 x 22 cm
  ISBN
  9780992240455
  CALL NUMBER
  HV6535.S63 R77 2015
  Copy 1
  Request in
  Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

Shenker, Jack: THE EGYPTIANS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Shenker, Jack THE EGYPTIANS New Press (Adult Nonfiction) $32.50 1, 3 ISBN: 978-1-62097-255-7
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.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Shenker, Jack: THE EGYPTIANS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329312&it=r&asid=51907997df1e3467d179b2572d7afa83.
Accessed 12 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466329312
8/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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The Egyptians: A Radical Story
Jon Wright
Geographical.
88.3 (Mar. 2016): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Circle Publishing Ltd.
http://www.geographical.co.uk/
Full Text:
THE EGYPTIANS: A Radical Story
by Jack Shenker; Allen Lane; 15.99 [pounds sterling] (paperback/ebook)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Jack Shenker makes no secret of how much he disliked Mubarak's regime. Economic policies led to the 'fire sale of
Egypt's assets' and the 'deep immiseration of the majority of Egypt's citizens.' While a tiny elite made hay, there was an
'assault on the rural poor' and the whole process of 'structural adjustment' could 'only ever be implemented' with the
help of 'state violence'. Egypt found itself 'stuck in the present tense', forbidden from imagining a different or better
future. An entire generation was informed that, 'Rule was for the patriarch, and politics, change and defiance were not
for the likes of them.' Shenker confesses that, as a journalist on the ground, 'I often found it hard to articulate the size
and shape of Mubarakism, the depth of its toxicity.'
On such a bleak interpretation, the revolutionary events of 2011 presumably didn't come as too much of a surprise.
Indeed, Shenker spends some time tracing the growth of protest and disaffection during the later years of Mubarak's
rule. There were strikes and labour protests and many acts of communal resistance aimed at addressing local
grievances. Direct confrontation with the security forces also became a regular feature and people gained 'unvarnished
field experience of the brutality of police rule.' This produced both radicalism and 'practical lessons on how to fight
back.'
Shenker was there when the dam burst in January 2011 ('my notebooks are as raw as my memories') so he has a
personal interest in ensuring that we interpret those chaotic days, and the puzzling aftermath, accurately. He believes
that, thus far, we have got things badly wrong.
He is blunt: 'Egypt's revolution has been misunderstood, and a great deal of that misunderstanding has been deliberate.'
When contemplating the events of 2011 and what the future might hold we constantly encounter talk of neat and tidy
binaries: Islam or secularism, or the 'fight between oriental backwardness and Western liberal modernity', or a 'choice
between military authoritarianism and religious extremism.' Perhaps, writes Shenker, this is just an attempt, on the part
of elites both inside and beyond the country, to 'sanitize the revolution and divest it of its radical potential', or 'to
prevent us from thinking too seriously about the way things could be.'
Shenker has no wish underestimate the challenges ahead. What frustrates him is the creation of a narrative of
disappointment in which we see a 'textbook example of why mass resistance is doomed to failure.' Whatever happened
after 2011, he invites us to focus on 'millions of ordinary people choosing to reject the political and economic status
quo and trying instead to build better alternatives.' The potential of all that has not simply evaporated. There are still
'giddying possibilities' and, crucially, they reside among the farmers and workers who imagine fresh economic
scenarios and the DJs who make 'illicit music in backstreet garages.' Egypt remains in a 'prolonged moment of flux' and
8/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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the battle is between the old and the new. It makes no sense to divide the citizenry into neatly defined camps because
there are 'Egyptian men and women of every age, religious persuasion and social background on both sides of the
divide.'
Those in the 'new spaces' and 'radical imaginative pockets' face a struggle. The forces of counterrevolution were strong
and, among many, far from unpopular. A culture of exclusion soon returned and 'those who betoken difference of any
kind have been targeted relentlessly.' For all that, there are also the 'citizens who are no longer willing to surrender
questions of social justice to the "experts'" and who are 'refusing to allow the state to make decisions for them on
virtually every issue of importance.' This is an impressive legacy of revolution. We are, Shenker concludes, 'looking
out over a hurricane that will cause Egypt to shudder for a very long time.'
Shenker's book relates big ideas to dozens of intimate stories about Egypt and its people. It is too soon to tell whether
his assessments are correct but his passion, energy and journalistic acumen are remarkable. JON WRIGHT
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Wright, Jon. "The Egyptians: A Radical Story." Geographical, Mar. 2016, p. 65. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA448686555&it=r&asid=5e5df0769cb76945c4731810c105ad12.
Accessed 12 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A448686555
'The Egyptians' asks: Is Egypt ready for democracy?
David Holahan
The Christian Science Monitor. (Jan. 3, 2017): Arts and Entertainment:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Science Publishing Society
http://www.csmonitor.com/About/The-Monitor-difference
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Byline: David Holahan

In the six years since Egyptians rose up and overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled under emergency law since 1981, their country has been led by two more strongmen, one Islamic and the current one, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a former defense minister. As soon as one ghastly head is removed, another crops up, like the Hydra of ancient myth.

Is it possible that Egypt, which has been a nation state since the tenth millennium B.C., isn't ready for democracy, that it still requires a pharaoh to rule it? In the "election" held just months before he was deposed, Mubarak's National Democratic Party won an unbelievable 96 percent of the vote. The voters certainly didn't believe it.

Many observers argue that Egypt is back to square one and fated to remain there, that an uneasy "stability" is preferable to what might succeed it. Jack Shenker, the author of The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution, disagrees.

He writes, "[A]lthough the political gains that accompanied the first wave of revolution have largely been reversed, Egypt exists today in a prolonged moment of flux, in which the long-running custodians of the state are continually trying to stitch their stronghold back together and rule as if nothing has changed - as if all of Egypt was still Mubarak Country - while significant portions of the citizenry exist within an entirely new political culture that no longer accepts the structure of the old state at all."

An award-winning journalist who writes for The Guardian newspaper, Shenker has reported from Egypt for nearly a decade. He authoritatively documents, and places in historical context the political upheavals that have shaken it after January 25, 2011. Indeed, he was often right in the midst of them, shoulder to shoulder with protesters, getting tear-gassed, beaten, and arrested along with them. His understanding of Egypt and its people is visceral as well as intellectual.

The author's encounters with average citizens - whether farmers, fishermen, students, or factory workers - who have felt the brunt of a capricious and uncaring government are the most compelling parts of the book. For example, in 2014, on the third anniversary of the initial uprising, 18-year-old Mahmoud Hussein was arrested, tortured and jailed for wearing a "celebratory scarf" sporting the words "Nation Without Torture." At the time he was writing the book, Shenker reports that the teenager had been "held in detention for more than 500 days without charge."

As abhorrent as he finds Egypt's political mores, the author maintains that it is a faltering economy that is the main cause for recent unrest. As with many citizens around the globe, rich Egyptians are getting richer and poor ones poorer. In 2008, when labor strikes were proliferating, the national minimum wage remained unchanged since 1984.

Shenker lays the blame for Egypt's increasingly inequitable economy largely on Western neoliberal economic theory and its emphasis on market fundamentalism. He charges that the notion of what is good for big business is good for Egypt is putting the interests of international capitalists, wealthy Egyptians, and Western banks ahead of struggling citizens.

One example he cites is recent agriculture policy and the reversal of land reforms once championed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who also was a strongman but a beneficent one for average Egyptians. The current emphasis on cash crops for export has exacerbated the country's spiraling food costs, argues Shenker, who points out that Egypt, once an exporter of grain, is now the world's largest grain importer. A prime slogan of the 2011 protesters was "Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice."

Some readers may find the author's relentless advocacy and attacks on conventional wisdom wearing. He castigates Western leaders and journalists who have promulgated the narrative that the Egyptian revolution is a black-and-white struggle between "Islamists" and "enlightened secular forces," that stability, however imperfect, is preferable to "chaos."

While Shenker prophesies that the revolution is far from over, he doesn't provide any sense of what it will usher in if it is ultimately successful. Admittedly that's a tall order, but minus such speculation a "don't worry, be happy" impression is left regarding the fire next time.

Even those who are sympathetic to Shenker's criticism of the status quo may find this book lacking in balance. A 2013 Pew Research Center study reported some disturbing attitudes among Egyptians: Three quarters of those surveyed believed sharia law should be applied to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and the majority of those favored the cutting off of the hands of thieves (70%) and the stoning of adulterers (81%).

Democracy in Egypt, if and when it comes, will still have to wrestle with the question of Islam's role, and the rights of minorities, in governance.
Reading Piketty on the Nile; Egypt's uprising
The Economist. 418.8975 (Feb. 6, 2016): p76(US).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
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They've had enough of patriarchs and patronising

AFTER nearly three decades in power and 18 days of unrest, it seemed as if Hosni Mubarak was finally ready to relinquish his grip on Egypt. But as the old dictator took to the microphone on the night of February 10th 2011, it became clear that he was not willing to go quite yet. "I am addressing you all from the heart, a father's dialogue with his sons and daughters," he said, before offering a few worthless concessions. Mr Mubarak was merely the latest Egyptian ruler to claim the mantle of national patriarch. For once, the people refused to play the role of deferential children. He resigned the next day.

Jack Shenker, a reporter for the Guardian, was in Tahrir Square, the heart of the uprising, as Mr Mubarak lost control of Egypt. What distinguishes his account from others is his presence in the slums, factories and homes where Egyptians first began to question their relationship with rulers who, under the pretence of economic reform, enriched only themselves and a small elite. To many in the West, the hip, young liberals who made up a portion of the protesters in Tahrir are the embodiment of Egypt's uprising. But it was seasoned labourers in obscure cities who struck the first and biggest blows against authoritarian rule.

That is fitting. Over 3,000 years ago the craftsmen of Ramses III, while building the tombs of pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, laid down their hammers and demanded more food. Labour unrest was so common by the end of Mr Mubarak's reign that it is difficult to mark a turning-point. But Mr Shenker highlights disputes over compensation at the enormous textile plant in Mahalla, a "cauldron of rebellion", in 2006. Nothing exposed the state-labour relationship more than the seating arrangement during talks between the parties. On one side of the table sat the head of the company and local politicians. Next to them was the appointed president of Egypt's official trade-union federation, facing the elected leaders of the striking workers, whom he ostensibly represented.

Most of Egypt's problems can be traced back to the market reforms of its leaders, claims Mr Shenker, who often sounds as if he is quoting passages from Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century". Egypt, he laments, suffers from the "deep-rooted international patterns of privileged accumulation and mass dispossession" that are a direct result of neoliberal capitalism. You can hardly blame Mr Shenker for thinking as he does. Facing economic crisis in the early 1990s, Egypt signed on to the standard IMF stabilisation plan that called for cutting budgets, slashing subsidies and privatising public enterprises. Mr Mubarak moved at a breakneck pace, with little regard for average Egyptians, who depended on government handouts. International financial institutions, impressed by the country's strong GDP growth, lauded the president.

But the benefits did not trickle down, and the public became disillusioned. Mr Shenker uses Egypt's woes to discredit neoliberalism, yet he describes vividly how Mr Mubarak's reforms were a fraud, creating only the "facade of competition and pluralism". Egypt replaced public monopolies with private ones, and the story is better understood as an indictment of abusive rent-seeking than of free markets.

Mr Shenker's despair at the economic zeitgeist is matched at least by his hope for the future. "A significant proportion of the Egyptian population no longer think about themselves and about politics in the same way, and are no longer prepared to put up with the old crap," says one of the tired young revolutionaries who fill his book. Western journalists have tried hard to take something--anything--positive away from the failed uprising. In this regard, Mr Shenker is more convincing than most. But for now Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the current strongman, has "rebooted" the patriarchy--and been embraced by a large number of Egyptians. "I love Egypt's youth and consider them my children," he says. On the surface, Egypt looks and sounds much as it did before the uprising in 2011.

The Egyptians: A Radical Story.

By Jack Shenker.

"Shenker, Jack: THE EGYPTIANS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329312&it=r. Accessed 12 Aug. 2017. Wright, Jon. "The Egyptians: A Radical Story." Geographical, Mar. 2016, p. 65. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA448686555&it=r. Accessed 12 Aug. 2017. Holahan, David. "'The Egyptians' asks: Is Egypt ready for democracy?" Christian Science Monitor, 3 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476277879&it=r. Accessed 12 Aug. 2017. "Reading Piketty on the Nile; Egypt's uprising." The Economist, 6 Feb. 2016, p. 76(US). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450846256&it=r&asid=a5fb42e833c80be97d9ddea7331eed90. Accessed 12 Aug. 2017.

• Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/01/the-egyptians-radical-story-jack-shenker-review
  Word count: 723

  The Egyptians: A Radical Story by Jack Shenker – review
  A sophisticated analysis of the roots – and fruits – of Egypt’s 2011 revolution
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  Anthony Sattin
  Monday 1 February 2016 04.00 EST Last modified on Tuesday 2 May 2017 14.02 EDT

  Egypt used to be seen as a dull newspaper posting, with journalists complaining, over the empties at the Greek Club in Alexandria or a coffee at Simonds in Cairo, that nothing ever happened. Then, five years ago, crowds began to appear in the street, demanding some of the things we in the west take for granted: an opportunity to change the government, a right to representation, the accountability of the police, an impartial judiciary. 25 January 2011 is usually held to be the start of the public protests that climaxed, on 11 February, with the departure of Hosni and Suzanne Mubarak and their sons from the presidential palace. Jack Shenker covered those 18 days and its aftermath for the Guardian.

  The limitations of much of the press coverage led, inevitably, to a dangerous oversimplification in which Mubarak was bad and the Tahrir Square crowds were good (except for those men raping women in the square), with Barack Obama speaking for us all when he said: “Egyptians have inspired us… they have changed the world”. The Egyptian army was good because it did nothing to stop the protesters (unlike the central security forces), but it became bad when it helped to create the post‑Mubarak regime.

  Egypt itself went from inspiring to horrifying, as the revolution was overcome by a counter-revolution, while the perception of the struggle morphed from people versus tyrant to violent Islamist martyrs versus the forces of order. The real story is more confused and more complicated, and, as Shenker presents it in this detailed, meticulous and fascinating book, more hopeful.

  Most coverage of the movement that overthrew Mubarak tended to focus on the square, although some commentators did look back to the previous summer, 2010, when policemen in Alexandria dragged a young man called Khaled Said into the street and beat him to death. The response to the murder and inevitable cover-up was as unexpected by the Mubarak regime as it was by bored journalists. The effect of the “We are all Khaled Said” slogan – with its suggestion that any Egyptian could now be dragged out of a cafe and beaten to death – has been overstated, but it was a symptom of a growing desperation.

  The perception of the struggle morphed from people versus tyrant to violent Islamist martyrs versus the forces of order
  But Shenker has traced those fault-lines much farther back in history, to the uprising of Colonel Urabi in 1881, when the British invaded to keep the Egyptian viceroy in place, and to the fiasco of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, after which Nasser insisted that citizens should allow the state to know best.

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  A historical long view is just one of the things that makes this book stand out. Shenker mixes details of the events that landed presidents Mubarak and his Islamist successor Morsi in prison with a first-hand view of the country since the return of the strongman era – with Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Morsi’s defence minister, now president. Sisi has stated that if the sort of crowds that gathered to demand Morsi’s departure came out against him, he would step down. But, as Shenker shows, Sisi has since done much to ensure those crowds will not gather by changing laws, stifling dissent and even planning a new, easier-to-police capital city.

  This, along with the continuing violence, lies behind the media simplification that “poor Egypt” is doomed. While Shenker accepts that Sisi’s regime is more repressive “than almost anything that has passed before”, he also shows that one of the great achievements of the struggle that led to the 25 January revolution is the insistence of many Egyptians that they have rights. So while there will be many dark days ahead, this detailed, passionate book shows why “to the frustration of those who seek to neutralise it, that struggle cannot be contained”.

  The Egyptians is published by Allen Lane (£15.99). Click here to buy it for £12.79

• Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/02/the-egyptians-jack-shenker-review
  Word count: 1403

  The Egyptians by Jack Shenker review – a book not just about the revolution, but an act within it
  This meticulous, passionate study combines on-the-ground reporting of the Egyptian revolution of 2011 with effective analysis of its causes and achievements. Its heart is with the people
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  Ahdaf Soueif
  Saturday 2 April 2016 05.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 2 May 2017 13.55 EDT

  Jack Shenker’s book wears its heart on its cover. From the top right hand corner, Nefertiti’s eyes above her gas mask fix you with a stern, sorrowful look, the nom de plume – or de guerre – of her creator, the street artist Zeft, on the spray-can pointed at her temple. Possibly the most famous example of Egyptian revolutionary graffiti, here she’s been given a collar of blood, echoed in the bottom left hand corner by the red-dripping Egyptian flag – itself a graffito that appeared in November 2011 after the army and police killed dozens of people in downtown Cairo.

  Since the regime in Egypt is stonily set against the merest suggestion – however playful – that walls should be seen as anything other than brutish enforcers of division, simply deploying graffiti puts you in the revolutionary (revolutiophile?) camp. And this is where Shenker deservedly belongs.

  By January 2011 he had lived downtown for three years, made friends, nosed out good stories and told them with style – so when the long-awaited revolution suddenly boiled over on his doorstep he was poised to be as bouleversé by it as any Cairene. Describing his notebooks of the time, he writes: “Two of the spiral-bound ones are twisted, their spines dislocated from the pages … The handwriting is hurried, messy – words have been snatched hastily to the paper amid drumbeats and shouts and gas and flight, and they’ve brought bits of that universe with them: grubby stains, smears of rock dust, strange ink … sentences appear in different colours and some of them are splotched by teardrops. Many pages are torn, and a few are missing.”

  Can the description of a notebook wring your heart? Yes, if you see yourself and those whom you love, those thousands whom you learned – in the streets – to love, in them. Bruised and dislocated, stained and splotched, some missing forever, but the ones who remain holding on – at least – to the narrative.

  Egypt: protesters descend on Tahrir Square
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  Of course, it had always been war, and it hadn’t started with the revolution; 25 January 2011 was just when everyone who had opposed Hosni Mubarak’s regime or who had wished they’d dared to oppose it came together and, for a long, miraculous moment, acted as one.

  The Egyptians: A Radical Story is fully cognisant of both: the long struggle that fed that revolutionary moment – and the miraculous nature of the moment. The revolution, as historian Khaled Fahmy has pointed out, is part of a sequence of turbulence that ebbs and flows but has never been entirely stilled since the mid-19th century.

  Seen like this it becomes possible to freely examine what it was like and why. We are able to give it its due as – in Shenker’s excellent phrase – a “leaderful” rather than leaderless revolution, and accept that it was “make-do” because “Make-do is all you have when you try to make and do something entirely new against the forces of old.”

  It needs to be celebrated as a “revolution on the form of revolution” that, like 1848, exploded the old ways “though struggling, so far, to articulate the new”. And most importantly, we need to recognise it as a climactic and transformatory point in an ongoing revolution that is not Egypt’s alone.

  The Egyptians positions the 18 days both within their national historical context, and within their political context in the world. The central argument of this meticulous, carefully researched and passionately argued book is that the battle in Egypt, as in almost every other place in the world, is between a dominant global neo-liberal capitalist system and the people whose lives and livelihoods it is destroying. It finds Egypt situated at the acute end of a global continuum of citizens struggling against the combined might of state and capital to find a formula for real, participatory democracy.

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  In Egypt the revolutionary wave has been beaten back for now by a powerful counter-revolution. In November 2013, as General Sisi was moving towards the presidency, the well-known Egyptian open-source software designer, blogger and dissident, Alaa Abd el Fattah wrote: “The trajectory of the revolution and the trajectory of the counter-revolution run together and influence each other. The counter-revolution is not just a defensive position taken by the enemies of the revolution; it is reactionary forces in their own right trying to profit from conditions of fluidity to shape the world to their liking – just as we are doing ...”

  The Egyptians pins down these forces and their backers with care and in chilling detail. For all its revolutionist fervour, this is a work of painstaking research and investigation. Just one of the tens of examples cited of the international backers swinging into action is the formation of the Deauville partnership with Arab countries in transition under the auspices of the G8 summit in May 2011 “to keep multinational capital fused with whatever political models emerged from the countries’ massive anti-government uprisings”.

  Everyone who is for the revolution in Egypt agrees that what it did achieve was to turn ordinary people into participants in political life rather than its passive subjects – or victims; that it was about “marginalised citizens muscling their way on to the political stage and practising collective sovereignty over domains that were previously closed to them”. But for more than six decades the state had actively barred people from political life – and in July 2013, weary, scared and disappointed in the Muslim Brotherhood they had elected into office, huge numbers of Egyptians chose to return to what they knew; they put their trust in what was presented as the one remaining pillar of the state: the military.

  Egyptian soldiers arrest a woman protester during clashes with military police near Tahrir Square, Cairo in December 2011.
  Egyptian soldiers arrest a woman protester during clashes with military police near Tahrir Square, Cairo in December 2011. Photograph: STR/AP
  So we are back in what Shenker calls “Mubarak country”, but with everything heightened a couple of notches – the glitz of the economic conferences, the grandeur of the promised projects, the severity of the proposed austerity measures, the scale of begging and borrowing, the war in Sinai. And heightened also is the state’s distrust of the people and the level and spread of state violence against them.

  But similarly heightened is the people’s sense of themselves as agents of their own fate. Shenker quotes a young activist, Nour, who, while admitting to exhaustion and the need for rest and recuperation, insists that “a significant proportion of the Egyptian population no longer think about themselves and about politics in the same way, and are no longer prepared to put up with the old crap.”

  Shenker lists some of “the debates lived out by Egyptian revolutionaries – over what sort of governance structures their lives, whether or not they should aim to seize state power, how best human beings can find the space in which to imagine and implement alternative forms of sovereignty and the courage to stand up to the brutality that will confront them along the way”. These are, as he says, “debates that are playing out everywhere”.

  The Egyptians is not just about the revolution, it is an act within it; making its case, documenting its achievements and tragedies, pushing forward its narrative. It celebrates the collective and enacts it in its co-operation with texts and witnesses. It exemplifies the social solidarity that recognises the global nature of our problems and the new and radical solutions they require.

  • Ahdaf Soueif’s Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed is published by Bloomsbury. To order The Egyptians for £12.79 (RRP £15.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

• Open Democracy
  https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/mariam-ali/book-review-egyptians
  Word count: 1065

  Book review: The Egyptians
  MARIAM ALI 27 January 2016
  Jack Shenker's The Egyptians: A Radical Story is a must read for anyone who wants to understand how and why Egypt's revolution happened – and why it continues.

  Flickr/Gigi Ibrahim. Some rights reserved.
  On Monday, if you were in Tahrir Square and didn’t know any better, you might have been forgiven for thinking that 25 January in Egypt marked nothing more than ‘police day’, as it did before 2011. People handed roses to security forces who filled the Square, long scrubbed of graffiti. You might have been forgiven for thinking the revolution had never happened.

  Except for Sanaa Seif, recently released from Sisi’s prisons, a lone reminder walking through Tahrir in the rain, "the January revolution continues" written on the back of her jacket. As heart breaking as it was to see that this is all that seems to be left of the millions packed into the Square demanding justice and freedom, it was a small but clear visual reminder that there are cracks in the edifice of counter-revolution.

  If you have no other reason than this to read Jack Shenker’s truly astonishing book, The Egyptians: A Radical Story, it would be enough: to be reminded of the myriad ways in which the revolution continues, despite the regime’s increasingly desperate attempts to tell us that it failed, or never happened, or was their idea all along. To be reminded that there is yet hope and that much of the states’ continued repression is a manifestation of “the absurdity of power on the brink of collapse.”

  But there are many more reasons to read the book. It is painstakingly researched, moving, engaging and engaged, the most articulate and comprehensive account of the revolution I have read to date. More importantly, as indicated by the title, it is about the Egyptian people, their daily struggles against injustices great and small. This is revolution as the organic culmination of these ongoing struggles, a breakthrough in the Egyptian people’s unfolding attempt to redefine the state, their relationship to it and to each other; “not a time-bound occurrence, nor a shuffle of rules and faces up top, but rather a state of mind.”

  Shenker, a journalist and writer based in London and Cairo, weaves together a compelling narrative from the historical and contemporary events, trends, phenomena that went into creating this mind set. He describes the effects on individuals and communities of consecutive top-down economic and social reforms, cosmetically different but predicated on maintaining elite control over resources and patronage networks – and all enforced with state violence.

  The Egyptians: A Radical Story
  From Mohammed Ali to Mubarak, Sadat to Sisi, those with a monopoly on violence (and those in their favour or whose favour they court) have wielded it brutally to achieve their goals; torture, paid thugs, political prison, and disappearances have pockmarked the political landscape and scarred the bodies and minds of citizens across Egypt. As Shenker shows us, these patterns of repression are not aberrations, as they are often framed when acknowledged, but have been part and parcel of Egypt’s ‘modernising’ projects, closely linked to global dynamics.

  Time and again they are met with resistance and resilience, in Kamshish, Sarandu, Mahalla, Qursaya, and Cairo, in the fields and factories and on fishing boats, on Queen boat and in the Egyptian Museum. In countless mini-Tahrirs against countless mini-Mubaraks, women, workers, farmers, Christians, the Bedouin, teenagers, professionals, artists have worked and fought together to demand and take their rights rather than plead for favours, to wrest back control over their bodies, resources, beliefs and ways of life from a paternalistic state, to keep taking one step forward for every two steps back.

  Shenker reminds us ­– repeatedly and patiently because he knows he is up against a barrage of ‘expert’ mainstream media analysis – that the real fault lines in Egypt are not religious. Instead, they cut across religion, age, sex, and background, “horizontal rather than vertical lines” between the power network and the people, between those who would maintain the old ways and those fighting for the new.

  His excavation of the shared experience and memory of modern Egypt is broad and deep. As I read I found myself not only reliving but also learning in great detail about things I had experienced, or read about, or protested about, or heard about from my parents, that had filtered into my own political awakening in Egypt, led to my own reasons for being in Tahrir. As well as being moved to tears several times, I had several “a-ha!” moments where events that had resonated with me at the time but left no conscious impression of fitting into a bigger picture became a coherent account of how and why the tipping point was reached.

  There is no pretence at being ‘objective’ here, though the research is thorough, and the facts facts. There is an honest and refreshing romanticism, a genuine caring for how it turns out, a hoping for something better that anyone who was in Tahrir over the course of those 18 days (and later) will recognise, and which made it that much more enjoyable to read.

  More than anything else I’ve read on Egypt’s revolution (I will recommend it to all who have asked me since moving to London to ‘explain’ the revolution and why it has ‘failed’), it tells the story right. It makes it clear why, even if it had not been for Khaled Said’s brutal murder, there would have been another breaking point, another immediate ‘lead up’ to Tahrir.

  Many media outlets, in their coverage of the anniversary of the revolution, have framed their pieces by asking, “was it worth it?” This book doesn’t just answer that question – it shows why it is so wrong to ask it in the first place. The question assumes revolution as a rational choice, a weighing of pros and cons, rather than a necessary result of often life-and-death struggles. There could have been no other way and it is not over yet, not just in Egypt but all over the world.

  The Egyptians: A Radical Story by Jack Shenker, is published by Allen Lane on 28 January 2016.

• Spectator
  https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/for-egypt-a-bitter-winter-has-followed-the-arab-spring/
  Word count: 916

  For Egypt, a bitter winter has followed the Arab spring
  According to Jack Shenker, things could hardly be worse for this great country after its tragically failed revolution
  Nicholas Blincoe
  Egypt on its knees: Friday prayers in Tahrir Square
  Egypt on its knees: Friday prayers in Tahrir Square
  30 January 2016 9:00 AM
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  The Egyptians: A Radical Story
  Jack Shenker
  Allen Lane, pp.510, £15.99
  Jack Shenker is a throwback to an older, more romantic age when foreign correspondents were angry, partisan and half-crazed with frustration at the stupidity of the powerful. He made his name in Egypt, arriving with nothing more than a desire to be a reporter. As the revolution began, he moved to Tahrir Square and started to publish stories in the Guardian. He soon began to win awards, notably for a piece on the deaths of African migrants in the Mediterranean. He has continued to report around the world, but his first love remains Cairo. The Egyptians, his first book, is fuelled by anger and frustration. Shenker was there at the dawn of the revolution, lived through the disappointment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s election victory, and is now a witness to the counter-revolution that brought the brutish Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to power.

  There is plenty of reason to be angry in post-revolutionary Egypt. About the only person who still lauds the coup is Tony Blair, who Shenker finds working with Sir Martin Sorrel’s WPP to rebrand the latest dictator-led Egypt. Since seizing power, the generals have outlawed political parties, cancelled elections, sent every notable revolutionary to the organised rape centres that double as prisons in Egypt, and are now presiding over a total economic collapse. Shenker wants to find light in this tunnel and argues that the spirit of resistance has not been crushed. He points to graffiti artists, techno DJs who play the local style known as magharanat, volunteers who combat sexual abuse at demos and an online debate forum, Salafyo Costa, which could be translated as Salafists Enjoying Coffee. Shenker recognises his examples are quite slim, however, and the book is coloured by lost hope.

  Anyone lucky enough to break out of the Cairo of pyramids, bakshish and perfume shops will discover one of the world’s great cities. When the revolution began, a BBC reporter declared that Cairo had never before experienced the exuberant scenes taking place behind her in Tahrir Square. I had been there on the night in 2010 when Egypt beat Algeria 4–0 in the semifinal of the Africa Cup and knew that she was wrong. Cairo is an intense and crazy place, so when Shenker looks for signs that a radical spirit still exists, one wonders if he is merely seeing the everyday buzz of Cairene life.

  Egypt’s problems are obvious enough. It has no law and order, no functioning state institutions and no real government. The police and army are self-serving mafias, and the only way to secure a job and hope to make a living is through patronage and bribery, so there is no point in wasting money on training or education. The country is sinking into inertia, with low skills, outdated industries and no tax base.

  The long-serving President Mubarak relied on gas, tourism and revenue from the Suez Canal, all of which are failing for different reasons. Thirty years’ worth of attempts to reinvigorate industry through privatisation and competition, angrily dismissed by Shenker as ‘neo-liberalism’, have failed because state-owned companies simply became private monopolies, immune from risk and with no incentive to modernise. As Shenker notes, one cause of the revolution was the discovery that Mubarak was selling gas to Israel below market prices, which caused consternation as much as outrage: here was a man who could not even steal competently.

  Any book on Egypt today would be crippled by dismay. No one could blame Shenker for failing to rise above his disappointment, but perhaps it skews his analysis. He focuses only on Egypt, ignoring the wider revolutions that give Tahrir Square its immediate context, without offering any specifically Egyptian reason as to why the revolution happened when it did. Instead, he presents a Manichean struggle between two entities he dubs Mubarak Country and Revolution Country, as though they are opposing eternal forces. Already, Mubarak feels too outdated to explain much at all. In Shenker’s account, Mubarak’s great crime was to sell off Egypt to the global economy, a process he dates back to the transition from Nasser to Sadat. One might feel that Sadat deserves more charity, at least for steering an autonomous course by breaking with Russia and reversing Israeli war gains.

  Shenker’s book gains power when he reports on events; for instance, the horrific account of the techniques used by gangs of rapists to drive women away from the big demos. Yet his analysis of the revolution and its failure never goes beyond his rage at global capitalism. At this level of abstraction, no person or group is really to blame for Egypt’s parlous state, but nor is it possible that anything will ever change. One hopes someone, somewhere, has an analysis that contradicts this pessimism. Egypt may be a basket case, but anyone who knows the country falls in love with it. To believe it is beyond salvation is too heartbreaking to contemplate.

• Middle East Monitor
  https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160301-the-egyptians-a-radical-story/
  Word count: 1222

  The Egyptians: A Radical Story
  March 1, 2016 at 2:40 pm | Published in: Africa, Egypt, Review - Books, Reviews

  Book Author(s) :Jack ShenkerPublished Date :January 2016Publisher :Allen LanePaperback :544 pagesISBN-13 :978-1846146329Review by :Noor Ahmad
  Noor Ahmad
  March 1, 2016 at 2:40 pm
  0
  SHARES
  It was not without excitement that I approached Jack Shenker’s book, The Egyptians: A radical story, a book long overdue as the clasp of the counter-revolution seems to have captured hope in a vice-like grip. The book is split into three parts, falling broadly into the pre-revolution era, the crux of resistance and the ongoing revolution. Shenker begins by setting the scene, explaining that the book aims to be a narrative away from the elites yet very much aware that we all live in a green zone seeing the world through our biases. Despite wanting to challenge these biases, the author is refreshingly honest in confessing that this book, like all books, takes a side.

  A story of corruption and interests unfolds as Shenker covers the Nasserite, Sadat and Mubarak eras in terms of global economy, capturing perfectly the harsh reality being lived by those at the mercy of the rich and powerful, with state power pooling clearly into the interest of the rich. With Nasser came “embedded liberalism”, only to be followed by Sadat’s economic reforms, referred to as infitah, “opening” – ultimately another word for privatisation. The impact of Sadat’s politics, though lauded in the business fields, ultimately ate away at the core of Nasser’s social contracts, providing the average Egyptian with little to nothing.

  Long has the media, both national and international, perpetuated the narrative of Egypt being politically inert. The common held belief of Egypt being in stasis did not change post the January 25 Revolution, if anything, the view of a static Egypt was maintained and the coming of a revolution was a shock. In this, Shenker highlights exactly how far from reality the case was, how little pockets of resistance were bursting up and down Egypt, and perhaps what is truly shocking is the ignorance of the state in not expecting that anything could come from it.

  From Kamshish to Qursaya, threads of individual resistance are woven into a tale of the revolution, across time and the country, the revelation to the Egyptians, and to the readers, that in Egypt, economic liberalisation and political authoritarianism march hand in hand. As opposition to rural land reforms and military appropriation mounts, so does the awareness of the people, both of their power and of the State’s responsibility.

  In The Egyptians, the complexity of the State is one that is perhaps mind boggling to most readers, the ability of the elites to create a landscape controlled by an undemocratic power grid, that is more oft than not, invisible. As Shenker attempts to grapple with the reality of what a deep state actually means, he discovers that the horror lay not in the stories told – not that the book is short of accounts of state violence – but in the psychological sabotage of the people. In order for the State to maintain its veneer of respectability and distance itself from any backlash, it has repeatedly informed the people that they have no agency, they are powerless and that change is granted only from a benevolent father figure (the State).

  In seeking to maintain its patriarchy, the State’s discourse often attempts to draw parallels between the smaller family unit and a larger one, where the regime is the paternal figure steering the country ahead in turbulent times. It seems only fitting, that in the creation of anything outside mainstream control, such as ashwa’iyat (often translated to slums) and mahraganat, local popular music, we see individuals fighting to create their own space. The stubborn insistency to reject state defined norms, is not only what makes Egypt and the revolution quintessentially Egyptian, but is by definition, their resistance.

  Since the beginning, Egypt has been condemned to be a story of binaries, an oversimplification of a people who wanted freedom and rose. In actuality, Egypt’s reality is far from a simple story, and as Shenker portrays it in what is perhaps the most detailed book on the Egyptian revolution, the struggle extends long before that. A heady and dizzying read, the reader is left with a sense of exhilaration, as a story of suppression and consequently resistance spans the pages.

  Despite Shenker’s eagerness to break free from all elite narratives, he appears susceptible to that which he outwardly condemns in his books. Whilst conveying the reality of state violence and repression, the forcing of a “with us” or “against us” mentality, some may question how the Muslim Brotherhood have been reduced by him merely to an anti-revolutionary bloc, as an “other” when they have for so long been part of the fabric of Egyptian society and have as much claim on the revolution as anyone else.

  Throughout the book, Shenker does away with the image of the poor ignorant Egyptian farmer, portraying them as innovative and free thinkers, yet somehow manages to excuse and whitewash the support for the coup. In the same book where Shenker quotes self-proclaimed liberals and revolutionaries; Alaa Aswani, who called for the banning of voting for those illiterate and cheered on the military’s brutal crackdown, and Gigi Ibrahim, who insisted on calling the military coup in July 2013 a revolution, he is unforgiving of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), rehashing the popular line of “selling out the revolution” in Mohamed Mahmoud street, when dozens of Muslim Brotherhood youth could share stories of their shouts against the armies, of the tear gas that was like no other.

  While refusing to allow authorities to put the revolution in a box, Shenker refuses to give space to MB “revolutionaries”, everything they have done was appropriated, taken from the true owners of the revolution. There is much to criticise Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood for, but there is a worry that in feeding into the Cairene elite’s rhetoric, Shenker falls guilty to the very thing he condemned.

  In an otherwise hopeful book, the bleakest picture is painted post the Rabaa and Nahda square massacres, the glee of the supporters of the massacre a chilling reality. Yet, what Shenker manages to portray in his detailed book, is what is so often lost in the desolate picture of Egypt today, and that is that the deep state is no longer deep – it has been pushed to the forefront. The veneer of respectability the state worked so hard to maintain, the distancing of both economic hardships and police brutality, has been torn down. In The Egyptians, Shenker acutely captures the moment of the revolution; a moment of no return. For the January 25 Revolution was not confined to a date or place, but a state of mind. And it is for that reason that the counter-revolution, despite how horrific and bleak things may appear now, failed. The definition imposed by the State no longer stands.

  Just like the mahraganat which insists on proving their existence, so does this book, it says defiantly we’re here and we’re here to stay.

• Foreign Affairs
  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2017-02-13/egyptians-radical-history-egypt-s-unfinished-revolution
  Word count: 203

  The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution
  by Jack Shenker
  Reviewed by John Waterbury
  In This Review
  This is not remotely a history, but it is a lively account full of vignettes that capture a good deal of contemporary Egypt. Shenker, a former correspondent for The Guardian, sees the country as locked in a struggle between neoliberal reforms and the revolutionary impulses of ordinary people ground down by international capitalism and its agents in the deep state. He issues quite a few Olympian judgments that brook no dissent, as when he declares that “neoliberalism is a political project and its implementation always involves a mass transfer from the poor to the rich.” But Shenker is also an eloquent witness to several of Egypt’s beleaguered communities—peasants, factory workers, bloggers, women, gays—who were momentarily liberated by the uprising of 2011. Only one Islamist, a jovial Salafist, slips into the narrative. Shenker seems to view Islamism as one of the many guises that the oppressed don to face their oppressors. His main message is that the forces of revolution are loose in the land: the movement that toppled Hosni Mubarak was only the opening salvo.

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