Maria Golia – författare

Cairo is a 1,400-year-old metropolis whose streets are inscribed with sagas, a place where the pressures of life test people’s equanimity to the very limit. Virtually surrounded by desert, sixteen million Cairenes cling to the Nile and each other, proximities that colour and shape lives. Packed with incident and anecdote Cairo: City of Sand describes the city’s given circumstances and people's attitudes of response. Apart from a brisk historical overview, this book focuses on the present moment of one of the world’s most illustrious and irreducible cities.Cairo steps inside the interactions between Cairenes, examining the roles of family, tradition and bureaucracy in everyday life. The book explores Cairo’s relationship with its ‘others’, from the French and British occupations to modern influences like tourism and consumerism. Cairo also discusses characteristic styles of communication, and linguistic mêmes, including slang, grandiloquence, curses and jokes.Cairo exists by virtue of these interactions, synergies of necessity, creativity and the presence or absence of power. Cairo: City of Sand reveals a peerless balancing act, and transmits the city’s overriding message: the breadth of the human capacity for loss, astonishment and delight.

An exhilarating and original history of Egypt, from the pyramids to the precarious presentIn The Shortest History of Egypt, Maria Golia draws on extensive historical research, and her years of experience living and working in Egypt, to offer a fresh and insightful perspective on one of the worlds oldest civilisations. Golia deftly traces Egypt s trajectory from Neolithic times to the Arab Spring and up to the present day, and in doing so illuminates the environmental, temporal and cultural forces that have shaped it.Egypt looms large in the popular imagination, conjuring images of pyramids, pharaohs, tomb raiders and vast deserts. Yet its true allure might lie in its impressively long history and what it tells us about the human condition. Just like the ancients, we re preoccupied with life s brevity and how to prolong its pleasures and reduce its pains. In many ways, Egypt is a case study in how people endure.Written with wit, clarity and a contemporary beat, this is a wild and intoxicating ride through Egypt s history. A sweeping history of Egypt, written with authority and literary flair. Golia effortlessly distils a broad range of recent scholarship to paint a portrait of the country and its people that is convincing and endearing, but also uncompromisingly honest. Campbell Price, author of Golden Mummies of Egypt Sharp, elegant and insightful David Wengrow, co-author of The Dawn of EverythingTo condense Egyptian history into 200 pages with such wit, insight and revelatory knowledge is truly a great literary achievement. Comfortable with contradictions, unfazed by complexity, dazzled by Egypts luminous past, The Shortest History of Egypt is the ultimate primer for anyone enchanted by this legendary land that is, almost all of us. Wade Davis, author of Beneath the Surface of Things[The Shortest History of] Egypt compresses history without squeezing out its humanity and colour. The Saturday PaperTable of Contents:The Formative Millennia (c. 7000 BCE 2200 BCE)Order and Disorder (c. 2200 BCE 332 BCE)Amalgamation (332 BCE 1517 CE)Replay (1517 1999)Once More, With Feeling (1981 2025)

Ornette Coleman’s career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African American composer and musician was zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues tradition, Ornette and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare of big band swing gave way to bebop, a faster music for a faster, post-war world. At the dawn of the Space Age and New York’s 1960s counterculture, his music gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called ‘the new thing’ or ‘free jazz’.Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the compelling story of one of America’s most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world.

Ornette Coleman’s career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African American composer and musician was the zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues tradition, Ornette and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare of big band swing gave way to bebop, a faster music for a faster post-war world. At the dawn of the Space Age and New York’s 1960s counterculture, his music gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called ‘the new thing’ or ‘free jazz’.Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the compelling story of one of America’s most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world.

To secure a comfortable afterlife, ancient Egyptians built fortress-like tombs and filled them with precious goods, a practice that generated staggering quantities of artefacts over the course of many millennia, but one which has also drawn thieves and tomb-raiders to Egypt since antiquity.Drawing on modern scholarship, reportage and period sources, this book tracks the history of treasure-seekers in Egypt and the social contexts in which they operated, revealing striking continuities throughout time. Readers will recognize the foibles of today’s politicians and con artists, the perils of materialism, and the cycles of public compliance and dissent in the face of injustice. In describing an age-old pursuit and its timeless motivations, A Short History of Tomb-Raiding shows how much we have in common with our Bronze Age ancestors.

To secure a comfortable afterlife, ancient Egyptians built fortress-like tombs and filled them with precious goods, a practice that generated staggering quantities of artefacts over the course of many millennia, but one which has also drawn thieves and tomb-raiders to Egypt since antiquity.Drawing on modern scholarship, reportage and period sources, this book tracks the history of treasure-seekers in Egypt and the social contexts in which they operated, revealing striking continuities throughout time. Readers will recognize the foibles of today’s politicians and con artists, the perils of materialism, and the cycles of public compliance and dissent in the face of injustice. In describing an age-old pursuit and its timeless motivations, A Short History of Tomb-Raiding shows how much we have in common with our Bronze Age ancestors.

Egypt looms large in the popular imagination, bringing to mind images of pyramids, pharaohs, tomb-raiders, and deserts. Mainstream media has employed its striking landscapes and mythologies to captivate audiences in major film franchises and bestselling novels. But Egypt’s true allure might lie in its impressively long history—and what it can tell us about the evolution of tradition, culture, and society.In The Shortest History of Egypt, Maria Golia draws on extensive historical research and decades of experience living in and writing about the country to offer a contemporary perspective on one of the world’s oldest, most storied civilizations. From a deep respect for tradition to the capacity for creativity, Golia examines the ways in which Egypt is a case study for the modern human condition. Much like the ancient Egyptians, we are obsessed with life’s brevity, searching for ways to prolong its pleasures and reduce its pains, and Golia deftly draws these connections.With wit and incisive commentary, Golia maps Egypt’s history from the Neolithic age to the Arab Spring and up to present-day dealings with limited water, land and civil rights. Illuminating the myriad dramas, environmental variables, and cultural forces that have shaped an anomalous nation, this primer is the perfect introduction to a country integral to our understanding of humanity as a whole.The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.