Raphael Cormack

The core of Midnight in Cairo looks at several of the most prominent women who participated in the music/film/vaudeville scene in Cairo in the 1920s and '30s, stars and entrepreneurs who navigated shifting cultural landscapes with varying degrees of success. That core is bookended with sections which look at entertainment and politics in 19th and very early 20th century Egypt, and at nationalism in post-WWII Egypt. This structure makes the book's subtitle somewhat misleading—designed to show more make the reader pick the book up moreso than to really represent what it's about—and on the whole I felt that the structure wasn't the best to help the argument/narrative drive of the book. I think if you have an existing interest in the cultural history/film studies of the interwar period, or in modern Egyptian history, this will be of interest to you, but I'm not convinced it will grab readers outside of those demographics. show less

A really interesting idea, with some interesting thoughts on what amounted to a difficult set of social circumstances for the women involved. The development of the Middle East and how their lives played through the mid 20th century were really more of a biographical description of turbulent times and minority women’s rights. Interesting and worth reading.

I enjoyed this survey of the great singers and dancers of Egypt. While biographical information is scant, the author does a good job capturing the ambiance of the clubs as wells as the hustle and struggle of the performers. It's difficult for a contemporary author to keep contemporary moralizing out such a survey, but these intrusions are not overbearing.

Both the similarities and the differences between the culture and society of Cairo and the West in the 1920's are fascinating.