Goodbye, Tahrir Square: Coming of Age as a Jew of the Nile - Hardcover

by Elio Zarmati (Author)

"Goodbye, Tahrir Square" is a first-person memoir written from the standpoint of a Jewish boy growing up in Egypt during the watershed years that shaped the Middle East into the powder keg it is today. Described as the "Holden Caulfield of the Nile" for his rebellious attitude, the boy witnessed--between the ages of seven to fourteen--the 1952 revolution that overthrew King Farouk and gave rise to the dictatorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser; the 1956 Suez war that marked the end of the British empire; and in its wake the destruction of the Jewish community that had lived in Egypt since Biblical times. Though set in times of revolution and war, "Goodbye, Tahrir Square" is not a political book. It is the story of a boy whose close-knit extended Sephardic family, full of rich traditions and colorful characters, is suddenly torn asunder by the forces of revolution and war. A man-child coming of age like a wild cactus in the rubble of the past, overcoming a hostile environment, forging friendships that transcend ethnic and religious animus, and finding his own identity as he awakens to literature, history, art, archaeology, and the magic of love and sex.

Author Biography

Born in Egypt and raised in Great Britain and France, Elio Zarmati was a reporter at NBC, a writer-director of films and TV shows in France and in the United States, the CEO of an international film subtitling and dubbing company, Gelula & Co., and the publisher of YWD magazine and the editor-in-chief of Recovery Living magazine. He lives in Tarzana, California.