'Fascinating and enlightening' Choice Magazine In 2002 three young women with no business
degrees no formal training and nothing to lose founded a fiercely independent bookstore. At
the time nothing like Diwan existed in Cairo. Culture was languishing under government
mismanagement and books were considered a luxury not a necessity. Over the next decade these
three women would contend with censors chauvinists critics one another and many people who
said they would never succeed in establishing Diwan as Cairo's leading bookstore. Frank fresh
and very funny Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller is a portrait of a country hurtling toward a
revolution a feminist rallying cry and an unapologetic crash course in running a business
under the law of entropy. Above all it is a celebration of the power of words to bring us
home. 'A unique memoir about career life love friendship motherhood and the
impossibility of succeeding at all of them at the same time. As a bookstore owner I found this
fascinating. As a reader I found it fascinating. Blunt honest funny' Jenny Lawson author
of Broken (in the best possible way)
