Mona El-Ghobashy

New York University

2022 Nikki Keddie Book Award Honorable Mention

Bread and Freedom: Egypt's Revolutionary Situation

Stanford University Press

Mona El-Ghobashy’s Bread and Freedom is a masterfully written account of the heady days of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and the turbulent two years which followed it. Arguing against conventional narratives of the revolution as one of hope followed by failure, she instead foregrounds uncertainty, contingency, and unpredictability to give us an original and gripping analysis of the forces which converged to create Egypt’s revolutionary situation. El-Ghobashy brings a vast array of sources together, including party manifestos, military communiques, protest slogans, parliamentary debates and court decisions in order to construct a fine grained, almost moment by moment account of political transition in Egypt, even as she places that very specific transition in the context of its antecedents in the Global South and within processes of democratization more generally. Bread and Freedom offers valuable insights to those who care about the fate of Egypt and its people and all who seek to understand how efforts at dramatic political change can be defeated

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