Raphael Cormack, "Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s" (Norton, 2021)

Raphael Cormack, "Midnight in Cairo: The Diva...

Up next

Najati Sidqi, "Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist: The Secret Life of Najati Sidqi" (U Texas Press, 2025)

In the public eye, Najati Sidqi was known as a journalist and writer, a translator of Russian classics, and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. However, Sidqi concealed a critical component of his life from the world and his family. He was an underground activist for the Palestinian ...  Show more

Yossef Rapoport, "Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Today, much of the Middle East is “Arab”—an identity that now extends across North Africa and up through the Near East to Syria. Yet how did this region become Arab? How did this identity spread? Was it due to migration, or conquest? Historian Yossef Rapoport, in his book Becomi ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

FWD: "Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s"
Bas Sou'al | afikra Community Podcast

In this afikra FWD, Hasheemah Afaneh talked about 'Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s' by Raphael Cormack. Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newsp ...  Show more

Umm Kulthum: Egypt’s singing superstar
The Forum

Umm Kulthum’s powerful voice and talent for communicating poetry was spotted early, when she accompanied her family to perform at weddings and special occasions. It wasn’t long before she was performing in the elite salons of early 20th-century Cairo, although her father dressed ...  Show more

Were the Divas of Egypt’s Roaring 20’s also pioneers of Egyptian Feminism? A conversation with Raphael Cormack
On the Middle East with Amberin Zaman

Raphael Cormack, visiting researcher at Columbia University, discusses his book, Midnight in Cairo; profiles the amazing women who shaped and dominated Egypt’s music, theater, film, and cabaret scene in the early 20th century against the backdrop o ...

  Show more

Yasmine Ramadan, "Space in Modern Egyptian Fiction" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
New Books in Intellectual History

In 1960s Egypt, a group of writers exploded onto the literary scene, transforming the aesthetic landscape. Yasmine Ramadan’s Space in Modern Egyptian Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) explores how this literary generation presents a marked shift in the representation of ...  Show more