1800s
1900s
19th nineteenth 20th twentieth century
A01=Trevor Mostyn
africa
Author_Trevor Mostyn
british occupation
Cairo
Category=NHH
Egyptian culture
eighteen nineteen hundreds
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
glamor
glamour
hedonism
history
Khedive Ismail
middle east
nile river
palace
Parisian garden
party
sophisticates
Suez Canal opening
upper class
Product details
- ISBN 9781845112400
- Dimensions: 126 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jul 2006
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Egypt's Belle Epoque was a period of incredible extravagance during which the Khedive Ismail's Cairo became the mirror image, both architecturally and socially, of decadent Paris. The glamour and hedonism of the era reached its peak during the magnificent celebrations for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Kings and emperors, artists, writers and Europe's most sophisticated flocked to the dazzling new Cairo of sumptuous palaces and Parisian gardens, where glittering parties were held on the banks of the Nile and where Verdi's Aida would later premiere at the new opera house. But the splendour was short-lived. Only a year after the Suez Canal opened, the Second Empire in France collapsed and the Khedive's excesses plunged Egypt into crippling debt. Ismail was eventually forced to abdicate, leaving Cairo to the British who occupied Egypt in all but name.
Trevor Mostyn has been a journalist, publisher and consultant in the Arab world, Iran and India. He visited Sarajevo as a war correspondent with Reporters sans Frontieres in 1993, and wrote for the New Statesman on the revolution in Iran and the civil war in Lebanon. He was a Financial Times correspondent in Cairo and is Middle East correspondent for The Tablet. His book Censorship in Islamic Society was published in 2002 and he has just finished a romantic novel set in the Middle East. He is also deputy chair of English PEN's Writers in Prison Committee.
