As the Egyptian revolution unfolded throughout 2011 and the ensuing years, no one was better positioned to comment on it—and try to push it in productive directions—than best-selling novelist and political commentator Alaa Al-Aswany. For years a leading critic of the Mubarak regime, Al-Aswany used his weekly newspaper column for Al-Masry Al-Youm to propound the revolution’s ideals and to confront the increasingly troubled politics of its aftermath.

This book presents, for the first time in English, all of Al-Aswany’s columns from the period, a comprehensive account of the turmoil of the post-revolutionary years, and a portrait of a country and a people in flux. Each column is presented along with a context-setting introduction, as well as notes and a glossary, all designed to give non-Egyptian readers the background they need to understand the events and figures that Al-Aswany chronicles. The result is a definitive portrait of Egypt today—how it got here, and where it might be headed.

Alaa Al-Aswany is the author of The Yacoubian Building and many other novels.Sarah Cleave is an editor at Gingko Library. Aran Byrne studied Arabic and Persian at SOAS, University of London, and has a master’s degree in Oriental studies at the University of Oxford. He is the Editor of East-West Divan, which is also published by the Gingko Library. Russell Harris is a curator, author, and translator who read Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. He currently works as an academic consultant at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and is the translator of Amin Maalouf’s Samarkand and Ahmed Faqih’s Gardens of the Night. Paul Naylor studied Arabic at SOAS, University of London. He has since worked as a researcher and translator for media clients such as Al Arabiya and PBS. He is currently in the PhD program on Islamic culture in West Africa at the University of Birmingham.