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Zikrayat: Eight Jewish Women Remember Egypt
Contributor(s): Atiya, Nayra (Author), Rugh, Andrea B. (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9774169557     ISBN-13: 9789774169557
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
OUR PRICE:   $17.96  
Product Type: Paperback
Published: April 2020
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - General
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- Biography & Autobiography | Historical
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (0.50 lbs) 176 pages
Themes:
- Ethnic Orientation - Jewish
- Cultural Region - Middle East
- Sex & Gender - Feminine
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Jewish women exiled from Egypt to New York share glimpses of a lost world, by the author of Khul-Khaal: Five Egyptian Women Tell Their Stories

Between 1948 and 1957, a period that witnessed two wars between Egypt and Israel, 60,000 members of Egypt's 75,000-strong Jewish population left the country, compelled by growing hostility to them because of their presumed links to Zionism, economic insecurity, and after 1956, overt expulsion. Decades later, during the 1980s and 1990s, the personal reminiscences of eight Egyptian Jewish women, presently residents of New York who had left Egypt, were meticulously collected by Nayra Atiya.

While Atiya's sample of eight narrators represents only a tiny percentage of the Jews who left Egypt, their accounts tell us much about the middle- and upper-class Jews who migrated to the Americas and Europe, giving us a vivid sense of their lives in Egypt before their departure and the dynamic role they played in Egyptian society. They were the children or grandchildren of generations of Jews who migrated to Egypt from around or near the Mediterranean to escape economic hardship and persecution or, in one case, a family conflict.

With one exception, Atiya's interlocutors resided in relatively upscale neighborhoods in Egypt near other Jewish families. They lived in elegant apartments, with servants, fine foods, memberships in elite clubs, and summers spent near Alexandria or in Europe. In Zikrayat, Atiya movingly captures the essence of these women's characters and experiences, the fabric of their day-to-day lives, and the complex, many-layered mood of those times in Egypt. In doing so she brings to life the ties that bind all Egyptians, offering a glimpse into a now vanished world--and the heartbreak of exile and migration.


Contributor Bio(s): Rugh, Andrea B.: - Andrea B. Rugh is Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. She lived in the Middle East for more than 25 years, including six years in Egypt. She has published books on family in Egypt, childrearing in Syria, and political leadership in the United Arab Emirates.Atiya, Nayra: - Nayra Atiya is an American oral historian, writer, and translator born in Egypt. She is the author of Khul-Khaal: Five Egyptian Women Tell Their Stories (1984, ) winner of the UNICEF Prize, and Shahaama: Five Egyptian Men Tell Their Stories (2016).