The Pharaoh's Shadow: Travels in Ancient and Modern Egypt

In a ruined temple on the Nile, Anthony Sattin sees a woman praying to the gods of ancient Egypt to bless her with a child. Later in central Cairo he experiences the exuberant celebrations of a saint's day and hears their stony condemnation by an Islamist. The ancient continues to rub up against the modern just as dramatically as when Flaubert wrote, 'Egypt is a wonderful place for contrasts - splendid things gleam in the dust.'In the company of Sattin, fearless in the face of snarling dogs and hostile guardians, we criss-cross modern-day Egypt in search of survivals from ancient Pharaonic culture. Inspired by the experiences of two long-dead English women, he visits moonlit temples and festivals, university professors and religious leaders to unearth snake hunters and magicians, wise women, tree worshippers and charlatans. The Pharaoh's Shadow celebrates Sattin's love of Egypt and his desire to understand her many facets - past, present and future.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Acknowledgements Permissions Map 1 Chances 2 The World and Its End 3 Women and the Nile 4 The Living and the Dead 5 Happy Birthday, Abu'l-Hajjaj 6 Mr Magic 7 The Original Egyptians 8 The Tree at the End of the Book Afterword Glossary Bibliography About the Author Index

About the Author :
Anthony Sattin is a specialist on North Africa and the Arab world. A journalist and broadcaster, he is also the author of several books of history and travel and has been described as one of the key influences on travel writing today. He began by writing fiction and was a graduate of Malcolm Bradbury's University of East Anglia Creative Writing programme. His fiction appeared in several magazines and anthologies before his first novel, Shooting the Breeze, was published by Jonathan Cape. His non-fiction has included The Gates of Africa, which tells of the creation of the world's first geographical society and the search for Timbuktu, and Lifting the Veil, a history of travellers in Egypt from 1768 to 1956. Anthony discovered and edited Florence Nightingale's letters from Egypt, which provided the inspiration for the critically acclaimed A Winter on the Nile, his account of parallel journeys to Egypt made by Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, which was described as 'a brilliantly assured experiment in biography, a triumph of the historical imagination'. His journalism has appeared regularly in the Sunday Times, Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveller and publications around the world. For eight years, Anthony contributed a weekly book column to the Sunday Times. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, editorial adviser on Geographical Magazine, founder-member of Travel Intelligence and ASTENE (the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East), Anthony has also written and presented on television and radio, particularly for BBC Radio 3 and 4. Anthony is a regular speaker at literary festivals and societies and has taught place-based writing in the UK, Morocco, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere.

Review :
'A triumph ... If you read only one travel book this year, make it this one.' Daily Mail 'One of the most fascinating and remarkable travel writing debuts to be published for many years ...' William Dalrymple, Spectator '... robustly straightforward, meditative in exactly the right degree, and finally gripping.' Youssef Rakha, Al-Ahram Weekly