Books

When researching the country of Egypt using the collections at the Library of Congress, the selected books listed below are a great place to start. The African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) curates the Library’s collections of print materials from and about Egypt in Arabic.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available. Please see the “Tips for Searching” section of this guide for more information on searching the online catalog in Arabic.

Egypt by Helen Chapin Metz; Library of Congress, Federal Research Division Staff (Contribution by)
Call Number: DT46 .E32 1991
ISBN: 0844407291
Published/Created: 1991
Full text available online
Part of "Country Studies," a series of 80 books previously published in hard copy by the Federal Research Division. Books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world.
al-Qaryah wa-al-sulṭah fī Miṣr fī al-qarn al-tāsiʻ ʻashar by Barakāt, ʻAlī, author.
Call Number: HN786.A8 B35 2018
ISBN: 9789779114910
Published/Created: 2018
The book presents a distinguished scholarly study on the history of the revolutions of the Egyptian countryside against the authority and its representatives, and their uprisings against the tyranny of power during the nineteenth century.
al-Adab al-Miṣrī al-qadīm, aw, Adab al-farāʻinah by Salīm Ḥasan
Call Number: PJ1481
Published/Created: 1945
The Encyclopedia al-Adab al-Miṣrī al-qadīm, aw, Adab al-farāʻinah is a huge historical encyclopedia written by the pioneering Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Salīm Ḥasan. He dealt with a precise explanation and a thorough analysis of the stages of Egyptian civilization since The pre-dynastic ages to near the end of the Ptolemaic period.
Miṣr al-mujāhidah fī al-ʻaṣr al-ḥadīth by ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāfiʻī
Call Number: DT100 .R28 1989 Arab
Published/Created: 1989
al-ḥalqah 1. Kifāḥ al-shaʻb fī ʻahd al-Ḥamlah al-Faransīyah ... -- al-juzʼ 2. Tārīkh Miṣr al-qawmī -- al-juzʼ 3. Min awwal ḥukm Ismāʻīl ilá bidāyat al-thawrah al-ʻUrābīyah -- al-juzʼ 4. al-Thawrah al-ʻUrābīyah wa-al-iḥtilāl al-Injilīzī-- wa-al-Sūdān -- al-juzʼ 5. al-Tarājuʻ wa-al-intikās -- al-juzʼ 6. Min thawrat sanat 1919 ilá thawrat 23 Yūliyū sanat 1952.
Khitab Al-Muwatanah Fi Al-Sihafah Al-Misriyah Al-Illiktruniyah by Ruwayda Ahmad Tilib
Call Number: PN5462 .T53 2017 Arab
ISBN: 9789773193614
Published/Created: 2017-01-01
The book presents the issue of Citizenship which is one of the important issues in Egyptian society at the present time, its importance has increased in light of the acceleration of changes that the world is experiencing today in the various aspects of political, cultural, economic and social life.

Egypt by Denis J. Sullivan; Kimberly Jones
ISBN: 9780275994822
Published/Created: 2008-06-30
The book explores the historical background that created the current realities in Egypt and examines the players and events influencing the nation today. It concludes with a series of recommendations for the Egyptian political establishment, and for the American government, in the belief that meaningful political and policy changes in Egypt.
Egypt after Mubarak by Bruce K. Rutherford
ISBN: 1400846145
Published/Created: 2013-02-21
Bruce Rutherford draws on in-depth interviews with Egyptian judges, lawyers, Islamic activists, politicians, and businesspeople. He utilizes major court rulings, political documents of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the writings of Egypt's leading contemporary Islamic thinkers. Rutherford demonstrates that, in post-Mubarak Egypt, progress toward liberalism and democracy is likely to be slow.
Egypt on the Brink by Tarek Osman
ISBN: 9780300203707
Published/Created: 2013-07-31
Tarek Osman is an Egyptian political economist with fifteen yearsÆ experience in strategy consulting, private equity, and political-economy advisory. He writes for several international publications and frequently comments on Egypt and the Arab world for think tanks and news media.
The Struggle for Egypt by Steven A. Cook
ISBN: 0199931771
Published/Created: 2013-03-01
In The Struggle for Egypt, Steven Cook explains how this parlous state of affairs came to be, why the revolution occurred, and where Egypt might be headed next. A sweeping account of Egypt in the modern era, it incisively chronicles all of the nation's central historical episodes.

Between Two Worlds by László Török
ISBN: 9004171975
Published/Created: 2008-12-17
This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of the evidence concerning the political, social, economic, religious and cultural connections between Ancient Nubia and Egypt from the special viewpoint of Lower Nubia, the frontier region between the First and Second Nile Cataracts.
Peace in Ancient Egypt by Vanessa Davies
ISBN: 9789004380219
Published/Created: 2018-09-06
One of the world's oldest treaties provides the backdrop for a new analysis of the Egyptian concept of hetep ("peace"). To understand the full range of meaning of hetep, Peace in Ancient Egypt explores battles against Egypt's enemies, royal offerings to deities, and rituals of communing with the dead.
Ptolemy I and the Transformation of Egypt, 404-282 BCE by Paul McKechnie (Editor); Jennifer A. Cromwell (Editor)
ISBN: 9789004366961
Published/Created: 2018-06-07
In this book, expert studies document the transformation of Egypt through the dynamic fourth century, and the inauguration of the Ptolemaic state.
The Double Kingdom under Taharqo by Jeremy W. Pope
ISBN: 9789004262959
Published/Created: 2014-01-01
In The Double Kingdom under Taharqo, Jeremy Pope examines the strategies used by Taharqo, a Kushite pharaoh of ancient Egypt's Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, to govern Nubia and Egypt together during the seventh century BC.

Return of the Spirit by Tawfiq al-Hakim; William M. Hutchins (Translator, Introduction by)
ISBN: 9781588268419
Published/Created: 2012-05-01
Both revolution and romance are at the heart of Return of the Spirit, first published in Arabic in 1933. The story of a patriotic young Egyptian and his extended family, ending with events surrounding the 1919 revolution.
Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz; William M. Hutchins (Translator)
ISBN: 9780385264709
Published/Created: 1992-12-15
Master storyteller Naguib Mahfouz crowns his best-selling Cairo Trilogy with this final chronicle of the Abdal-Jawad clan, climaxing the story begun in Palace Walk and continued in Palace Of Desire.
Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz; Maged El Kommos (Revised by); John Rodenbeck (Editor); Fatma M. Mahmoud (Translator)
ISBN: 9780385264785
Published/Created: 1992-12-14
This highly charged fable set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the late 1960s, centers on the guests of the Pension Miramar as they compete for the attention of the young servant Zohra.
The Mantle Odes by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych
ISBN: 0253222060
Published/Created: 2010-06-14
Three praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych places her original translations of the poems within the odes' broader cultural context.
The Sufferers by Taha Hussein; Mona El-Zayyat (Translator)
ISBN: 9789774243134
Published/Created: 1993-06-15
Taha Hussein (1889-1973), blind from early childhood, rose from humble beginnings to pursue a distinguished career in Egyptian public life, but he was most influential through his voluminous, varied, and controversial writings.
The Open Door by Latifa Al-Zayyat; Marilyn Booth (Translator)
ISBN: 9774246985
Published/Created: 2004-10-01
The Open Door is a landmark of women's writing in Arabic. Published in 1960, it was very bold for its time in exploring a middle-class Egyptian girl's coming of sexual and political age, in the context of the Egyptian nationalist movement preceding the 1952 revolution.

Competing Fundamentalisms and Egyptian Women's Family Rights by Jasmine Moussa
Call Number: KRM517.5 .M68 2011
ISBN: 9789004203105
Published/Created: 2011
Critiquing both universalism and cultural relativism as theoretical approaches, this book presents a comprehensive study of Egypt's Sharī'a-derived family law, and proposing practical methods to advance women's family rights on the ground, while respecting their religious and cultural identities.
Egypt as a Woman by Beth Baron
ISBN: 0520238575
Published/Created: 2005-02-28
The book examines the influence of gender in shaping the Egyptian nation from the nineteenth century through the revolution of 1919 and into the 1940s. In Egypt as a Woman, Beth Baron shows that, even though women were largely excluded from participation in the state, the visual imagery of nationalism was replete with female figures.
Memoirs from the Women's Prison by Nawal Al-Sa'Dawi; Booth (Translator)
ISBN: 070434002X
Published/Created: 1990-06-01
Saadawi offers her own Memoirs from the Women's Prison. She describes how political prisoners, both secular intellectuals and Islamic revivalists, forged alliances to demand better conditions and to maintain their sanity in the confines of their cramped cell.
Nurturing the Nation by Lisa Pollard
ISBN: 9780520937536
Published/Created: 2005-01-31
Focusing on gender and the family, this erudite and innovative history reconsiders the origins of Egyptian nationalism and the revolution of 1919 by linking social changes in class and household structure to the politics of engagement with British colonial rule.
Soft Force by Ellen Anne McLarney
ISBN: 0691158487
Published/Created: 2015-05-26
Challenging Western conceptions of Muslim women as being oppressed by Islam, Ellen McLarney shows how women used "soft force"―a women’s jihad characterized by nonviolent protest―to oppose secular dictatorship and articulate a public sphere that was both Islamic and democratic.

Egypt: African and Middle Eastern Reading Room Country Guide

African & Middle Eastern Studies: Ask a Librarian

Books