Ep 285. Raphael Cormack: Book Discussion of Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s

Belly Dance Life

Raphael Cormack has a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies with a focus on Egyptian theatre from the University of Edinburgh. He is currently Assistant Professor in Arabic Studies at Durham University. An award-winning editor and translator, Cormack is the editor of The Book of Cairo and the co-editor of The Book of Khartoum. His writing on Arab culture has appeared in the London Review of Books, Prospect and TLS, among others. Raphael Cormack is the author of Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s, an exploration of Cairo popular culture through personalities such as Rose Al-Youssef, Mounira al-Mahdiyya and Oum Kalthoum.

In this episode you will learn about:

- What’s the importance of 1920s in the Egyptian culture and entertainment industry

- How he chose which exact female stories to highlight, and why Samia Gamal wasn’t featured in his book

- His research methods

- Comparing careers of Mounira al-Mahdiyya and Oum Kalthoum

- What’s Raphael’s current focus on research

Show Notes to this episode:

Find Raphael Cormack on Instagram, FB, and Twitter. Check your local bookstores for his book “Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s”.

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