Egypt - through writers' eyes

£12.99

“Egypt - through writers’ eyes” continues Eland’s tradition of unearthing forgotten classics of world travel-writing, with a fantastic selection of some of the best travel writing that Egypt has ever given birth to.

No land on earth has been so long observed as Egypt, which was attracting awestruck travellers back in the days of Herodotus and Julius Caesar. Then came pilgrims to Sinai, crusaders and Napoloeon, followed by the Grand Tourists of the eighteenth century and those less grand with Thomas Cook in the nineteenth.

The range of voices gathered here is dazzling: an ancient myth from papyrus next to Naguib Mahfouz’s account of Alexandria, Florence Nightingale describing Abu Simbel side by side with Ahdaf Soueif’s description of Sinai. The medieval Cairo of Ibn Jubayr walks hand in hand with the modern city of the blind Egyptian thinker, Taha Hussein. Lucie Duff Gordon sails up the Nile, Edward Lane crawls through a sand-filled temple and Alan Bennett takes tea on the terrace of the Winter Palace Hotel at Luxor.