Taxi

"Taxi is a delightful book. It’s 58 short passages each of which is a taxi ride during which the author gets into conversation with the driver. These conversations range over just about every aspect of Egyptian life, but with a very strong political flavour too — which is the way that conversations with taxi drivers tend to go. It’s very much the view from the street. Obviously the writer is a sophisticated person — he’s a journalist, and he doesn’t try to come off as anything else. But the taxi drivers are taxi drivers, and they represent a wide range of opinion and some are very admirable and some are absolute shits. It’s written largely in Egyptian colloquial, rather than the literary language, and that gives it a lot of the flavour of real life. It rings very, very true – and it’s deceptively easy reading. It’s fun to read but covers a lot of very important subjects in Egyptian society. They’re based on real conversations. I’m sure he’s tidied them up and presents them to make them as cogent as possible, but they’re based on real conversations."