Writers seldom cause revolutions, especially novelists. Even the greatest and most visionary political authors – Solzhenitsyn, Orwell and Hugo – were bound to the task of reflecting a society in turmoil. But, in doing so, fiction can have a more profound impact than the frenzied efforts of photographers and news editors to explain violent political movement. Disparate sweeps of disaffection can take clear form in the mind of a skilled novelist, and change can be presented beyond the myopia of newsreel.
Ben Macintyre has found the novel that charts the character of the Egyptian dissenters. The Yacoubian Building was written by Alaa Al Aswany, a Cairo dentist, in 2002. It is a story of power, pessimism and resentment, and how they build towards violence. Macintyre writes (£):
‘To many of us, the scenes from Cairo seem confusing, at once uplifting and unsettling.
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