Taxi by Khaled Al-Khamissi, translated by Jonathan Wright, Qatar: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2011. pp.179
A new English edition of the Egyptian and International bestseller, Taxi, has been released with a new translation by Jonathan Wright, who has also translated the novels of Alaa Al-Aswany and Youssef Zeidan. The book is composed of 58 stories set in Cairo taxis, with drivers telling stories of their daily struggles intertwined with events taking place throughout the country: strikes, shortages, inflation and others.
Al-Khamissi includes a new conversation with a taxi driver from April 2011, after Mubarak had stepped down. This time the driver is optimistic about the future but worried that the transitional authorities are trying to put make-up on the old regime and keep things the same as before.
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