Description
A luminous portrait of the now-vanished cosmopolitan city and those who inhabited it during the first half of the 20th century
This book is a literary, social, and political portrait of Alexandria at a high point of its history. Drawing on diaries, letters, and interviews, Michael Haag recovers the lost life of the city, its cosmopolitan inhabitants, and its literary characters.
Located on the coast of Africa yet rich in historical associations with Western civilization, Alexandria was home to an exotic variety of people whose cosmopolitan families had long been rooted in the commerce and the culture of the entire Mediterranean world.
Alexandria famously excited the imaginations of writers, and Haag folds intimate accounts of E. M. Forster, Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, and Lawrence Durrell into the story of its inhabitants. He recounts the city's experience of the two world wars and explores the communities that gave Alexandria its unique flavor: the Greek, the Italian, and the Jewish. The book deftly harnesses the sexual and emotional charge of cosmopolitan life in this extraordinary city, and highlights the social and political changes over the decades that finally led to Nasser's Egypt.
Author: Michael Haag
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 09/27/2004
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.25h x 7.50w x 0.79d
ISBN13: 9780300191127
ISBN10: 030019112X
BISAC Categories:
- History | Middle East | Egypt (see also Ancient | Egypt)
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Social Science | General
This title is not returnable