In The Buried, Peter Hessler brings to life the secret history of the Arab Spring, masterfully weaving together a memoir of his time in Cairo with the hidden, intimate lives of ordinary Egyptians. With lyrical prose, Hessler introduces us to a side of the Middle East we never see in news accounts: an enterprising garbage collector, a gay man skirting police repression, an Arabic language instructor nostalgic for the country’s socialist past. These stories unfold on the backdrop of Egypt’s 5,000-year-old history, as we learn about the parallels Egyptians draw to their pharaonic past. Witty and deeply humane, The Buried is unlike any other book I’ve read about the Egyptian revolution, and stands as a remarkable testament to the country’s extraordinary history and to the struggle for human freedom.
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler will be published on May 7th by Penguin Press in North America, Profile Books in the United Kingdom, and Text Publishing in Australia and New Zealand.
Read Peter’s piece “The Refugee and the Thief” in the April 1, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, a story of trust and betrayal.