Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A vibrant portrait of the talented and entrepreneurial women who defined an era in Cairo.
One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry—as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry.
Raphael Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newspapers); nightclub singer Mounira al-Mahdiyya (the first woman to lead an Egyptian theater company) and her great rival, Oum Kalthoum (still venerated for her soulful lyrics); and other fabulous female stars of the interwar period, a time marked by excess and unheard-of freedom of expression. Buffeted by crosswinds of colonialism and nationalism, conservatism and liberalism, “religious” and “secular” values, patriarchy and feminism, this new generation of celebrities offered a new vision for women in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Egyptian theater scholar Cormack (coeditor, The Book of Khartoum) debuts with a lively history of early-20th-century Cairo focused on the music hall singers, dancers, and actors who became Egypt's first modern celebrities. Chronicling the rise and fall of the city's nightlife district, Ezbekiyya, from the late 19th century through its "golden age" in the 1920s and '30s and decline after the 1952 Egyptian revolution, Cormack profiles seven women who "demand to be heard as they asserted their wishes, claimed their rights, and made space for themselves." Oum Kalthoum grew up singing religious songs in her father's band and became, according to Cormack, "the most popular icon in the history of Arabic music." Her rival, singer-actor Mounira al-Mahdiyya, was the first Egyptian woman to lead a theatrical troupe. Frustrated by gossipy theater journalists, comedic actor Rose al-Youssef founded a magazine (and named it after herself) where performers could go "to give their side of the story." Cormack portrays the colorful lives of these women within the context of the era's political and cultural upheavals, including Arab nationalism and the emergence of an Egyptian feminist movement. This sparkling account casts the history of the Egyptian capital in a new light.
