Description

In February 2011, following an extraordinary eighteen days of continual protest by the Egyptian people, President Mubarak agreed to resign, bringing thirty years of a repressive and stagnant regime to an end. In June 2012, a new president was elected: Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which for half a century had been banned from operating publicly in the country. But, after only a year in office, Morsi was forced out by popular protests and the military establishment. In this revised and updated edition of his acclaimed book, Tarek Osman sets the current battle for the Egyptian state in the wider context of the country’s recent history. Famous until the 1950s for its religious pluralism and extraordinary cultural heritage, Egypt has become an increasingly unhappy and divided land, home to a largely undereducated and underemployed population, more than half of whom are aged under thirty. Osman examines the crucial roles of Arab nationalism, the Islamic movement, Egyptians Christians and liberal capitalism in the country’s recent past and present, and asks: where does Egypt’s future lie now? This new edition takes events up to summer 2013, looking at how Egypt has become increasingly divided under its new Islamist government.