Nezar Alsayyad brings historical Cairo to life in Cairo: Histories of a City: Anyone can enjoy a fairy tale novel, but arguably you’ll enjoy it more if the events depicted were real and the places only a taxi drive away. Cairo: Histories of a City offers you precisely this. Don’t imagine for a second that this book, written by famous Egyptian architect and urban historian Nezar Alsayyad, is another (dull) recitation of the city’s history. Alsayyad masterfully brings together the political, urban and social history of the city, explaining the connections between them in such a way as to spin a fairy tale from our real history. Tracing our city of 1000 minarets from the time of the Pharaohs, to look at the influence of the Arabs, the Fatimids and the Mamluks, right up to the modern era of gated compounds in the desert, the book brings our city’s many historical locations, and their stories, to life.