Wednesday 24 September 2008

Vintage Alexandria

Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City 1860-1960, compiled and written by Michael Haag. The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo and New York, 2008.

Click on the cover for a full description of the contents.

'Here in these astonishing illustrations - which are mesmeric - you find a world that has since disappeared.' - Birmingham Post

'An ode to the history of the cosmopolitan city.' - Daily News Egypt   

'Nineteenth-century photographs of Egypt have been widely published, but Vintage Alexandria offers a tantalising glimpse of the early decades of Egypt's twentieth century. A photographer as well as a historian, Haag demonstrates an eye for both the evocative and the documentary. ... Readers familiar with the work of Lawrence Durrell, Constantine Cavafy and E M Forster will appreciate this vision of a city "as brilliant, sophisticated and advanced as any in the Mediterranean"'. - The Times Literary Supplement