Currently reading
The Collected Stories
Middlemarch
Omensetter's Luck
Swann's Way
A Naked Singularity (Paper)
The Master and Margarita
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
Infinite Jest
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self
Maps and Legends
Taxi
Taxi is a collection of over 50 descriptions of fictional encounters with taxi drivers in Cairo. It was published originally in Arabic in 2006 and was a bestseller in Egypt. Imagine the kinds of conversations you might have with a taxi driver, here in Canada. Depending on the news and sports cycles, you might be chatting about an upcoming election and how all the candidates are about the same anyway, or perhaps you might discuss how the price of gas is always going up just before the long weekend. The Cairo taxi drivers' conversations are also about those things that are affecting their everyday lives. Their complaints and frustrations with the corruption and poverty give us a glimpse of the foundations of this year's 'Arab Spring'. Fascinating.
