In the 19th century, if you were well-to-do and suffering from lung disease such as tuberculosis, your best option was to reside in the agreeable dry climate of Egypt. Lady Lucie Duff Gordon (the 19th century authoress, not to be confused with the 20th century fashion designer and Titanic survivor) was among those who traded…
Author: Nicky B
Women explorers of Egypt
Yesterday was International Women’s Day. It strikes me as odd that half the world’s population gets only one specific day per year to demonstrate for equal rights. I suggest that for the next couple of thousand years, every single day is devoted to women’s rights. Then we might call it even. To focus on the…
Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth
Naguib Mahfouz is the well-known author of The Cairo Trilogy. Written in the lively coffee houses of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, his stories are full of colourful characters. So far, he is the only Nobel Prize winner for Arabic literature. But besides the lives he describes in the alleys of modern Cairo, he wrote a small…