"Chronicles of a Chairo Bookseller" by Nadia Wassef: Review by Nadia Wassef

Abstract

Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller is a memoir by Nadia Wassef, one of the three women who co-founded Diwan, Cairo’s first independent bookstore. At the time of its founding, the notion of public space for culture or creative output that was free from the influence of Egypt’s government was virtually unfathomable. As Wassef states in the book’s prologue: “Starting a bookstore at this moment of cultural atrophy seemed impossible—and utterly necessary.”