In the June issue of Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, Jon Wright reviews the book, writing:
...Many have written on these dramatic events, but Hessler introduces unexpected prisms of enquiry and the intimate perspective of an endlessly curious observer of Egypt past and present. ...The book achieves a great deal. It provides outstanding reportage of the Arab Spring but, better yet, are Hessler's accounts of the people he encountered. ...It is a rare book that takes such a bold approach to Egyptian history and contemporary politics. One moment we are reading about 13th-century BCE temples, the next we are hearing about the bare nails on office walls that, until recently, had held up portraits of Mubarek. The potential to confuse the reader was enormous. Hessler entirely avoids it in this spirited, deeply insightful book.
Peter Hessler‘s The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution was published this week by Penguin Press in North America, Profile Books in the United Kingdom, and Text Publishing in Australia and New Zealand.