Egypt as a Woman

Book excerpt: “Can anything new be said about modern Egyptian nationalism? Beth Baron's book Egypt as a Woman, one of the best modern Egyptian history books to appear in several years, leaves no doubt that it can. With evenhandedness and generosity, Baron shows how vital women were to mobilizing opposition to British authority and modernizing Egypt.”—Robert L. Tignor, author of Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire “A wonderful contribution to understanding Egyptian national and gender politics between the two world wars. Baron explores the paradox of women’s exclusion from political rights at the very moment when visual and metaphorical representations of Egypt as a woman were becoming widespread and real women activists—both secularist and Islamist—were participating more actively in public life than ever before.”—Donald Malcolm Reid, author of Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I