Peter Hessler’s The Buried Reviewed in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Section (Egypt)

Egyptian writer Yasmine El Rashidi, who lives in Cairo, and is the author of several books about Egypt, as well as an

On the street in Cairo, October 2011

editor of the Middle East arts and culture quarterly Bidoun, did a full page review of Peter Hessler’s The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review Section. Yesmine goes beyond Hessler’s book to point out elements of archaeological history of The Buried—from the Arabic al-madfuna—an elevated stretch of desert near Abydos. She also shares her own personal writer struggles of trying to write about Egypt, admitting, “The challenge, in my case, was that everything felt too close—too personal or intimate either to me, or to people I knew.”

In summing up her careful–but positive–review of Peter’s book, she admits, “In reading The Buried, which I admit is the kind of book I might have criticized in the past, I find myself changing my mind. What Hessler offers is something that no Egyptian could ever really write, and in the way, he adds alternative dimensions to a story, or the stories, of this place we call home, with all the good intentions of simply his own singular viewpoint and experience.”