Babylon of Egypt

Cairo is an overwhelming, intense, and unforgettable city that imprints immediatelyupon anyone who has visited or lived there. The city itself is aresult of the impressions and marks left by two millennia of settlements,conquests, and immigration. Three books recently published cover differentlayers of this city, and within each layer are multiples of layers of historyimpressing on each other and revealing a most complex and intertwinedamalgam of histories evidenced in the architecture extant today. All three books not only center around works from Cairo, but the contributorsand authors have all lived in this city of a “thousand minarets”for certain periods of time. Just as Nagib Mahfouz’s works bring to life themultifaceted city in novel form, creating characters that are never forgotten,so to do these books begin to bring to life and to communicate someof the fantastic histories that can be read from the buildings that mark theskyline and can never be forgotten.