Wednesday, November 20th, 6 PM – 8 PM: The Taste of Books with Alaa Khaled

During this session of The Taste of Books, the IFE welcomes writer Alaa Khaled to mark the release of his book The Carnival of Cairo: A Scene from the 1990s (Carnaval Al-Qahira). Vibrant and colorful, Cairo’s intellectual life was like a carnival, a spectacle without the separation between actors and spectators, where distances were replaced by free and familiar contact. This atmosphere gave rise to a multitude of literary and political movements and led to an explosion of expressive forms, where the repressed and the collective unconscious found their place, and where intimate and introspective writing flourished. In this sense, the 1990s represent an exceptional moment in the intellectual history of Egypt