Recommended books for Egypt?
 

We're tring to get to Egypt this year, finally!

Any recommendations for good books, either fiction or non-fiction, that I should read before we go? I generally like to do that before a trip, and there is SUCH a wealth of information about Egypt!

I have the Insight Guide "The Nile", and have been recommended "The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt". Unless they are particularly remarkable, I don't really need any more guidebooks, but I would be interested in a (few?) non-fiction book(s) about the pyramids, etc.

I also have on order "Death on the Nile" and "Letters from Egypt" by Lucy Duff Gordan. (Not interested in the Peters series of mysteries set in Egypt.)


I'd love some recommendations from fellow Fodorites on books you've enjoyed - particularly the kind you read afterwards and thought: "I really wish I'd read that before I went"!

Thanks!

I read Mahfouz's Beginning and the End when I was in Cairo, but I'd also suggest any of the books in his Cairo trilogy. He didn't win the Nobel Prize for nothing.

thit_cho:

You took the words right out of my mouth.

Have you read any of Wilbur Smith's novels? The Seventh Scroll and The Warlock are two I enjoyed very much.

Two books ( one each to stop fighting!! ) DK Eyewitness Traverl Guides EGYPT and Lonely Planet EGYPT - they are the BEST and the maps and walk through guides to sites will save you time and MONEY!!
enjoys...