Bøker av Yasmine El Rashidi

What can hip-hop tell us about Egypt today?A decade ago, millions of Egyptians took to the streets in a people-led revolution that captivated the world’s attention and sent ripples across the Middle East. But the so-called “Arab Spring” quickly faded, and a return to the status quo—of authoritarian rule—was cemented. What happened to the energy and desire for change?In Egypt, the answer lies in its youth, who comprise the bulk of the country’s fast-growing 106 million citizens. Sixty percent of the population is under the age of twenty-five, and their world views are very much influenced by social media: TikTok is their primary language and medium of choice. Music is their means of expression—in particular, a thriving hip-hop scene known as mahraganat. This music has given voice to deep dissatisfaction with the Egyptian state and the overall conditions of Egyptian society and culture. Could this be the start of a force for change? Laughter in the Dark is a riveting portrait of a country that is being transformed, for good or bad, by the rise of a fresh youth culture.

A young Egyptian woman recounts her personal and political coming of age in this brilliant debut novel. Cairo, 1984. A blisteringly hot summer. A young girl in a sprawling family house. Her days pass quietly: listening to a mother's phone conversations, looking at the Nile from a bedroom window, watching the three state-sanctioned TV stations with the volume off, daydreaming about other lives. Underlying this claustrophobic routine is mystery and loss. Relatives mutter darkly about the newly-appointed President Mubarak. Everyone talks with melancholy about the past. People disappear overnight. Her own father has left, too-why, or to where, no one will say. We meet her across three decades, from youth to adulthood: As a six-year old absorbing the world around her, filled with questions she can't ask; as a college student and aspiring filmmaker pre-occupied with love, language, and the repression that surrounds her; and then later, in the turbulent aftermath of Mubarak's overthrow, as a writer exploring her own past. Reunited with her father, she wonders about the silences that have marked and shaped her life. At once a mapping of a city in transformation and a story about the shifting realities and fates of a single Egyptian family, Yasmine El Rashidi's Chronicle of a Last Summer traces the fine line between survival and complicity, exploring the conscience of a generation raised in silence.