In today’s Wall Street Journal, author and editor of Freeman’s, author, and poet John Freeman writes in”‘The Buried’ Review: Digging Into a Revolution:”
Seen from afar, tectonic political shifts often look as if they consume a society. But have you ever been someplace in the middle of momentous political events and found everyone around you getting on with daily life? Few reporters seem better placed to fathom the complexities of this dynamic—ripples of disquiet permeating routine existence—than Peter Hessler. ...“The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution” is Mr. Hessler’s closely observed, touching and at times amusing chronicle of this tumultuous time. Drawing both from daily life and from interviews with highly placed political figures, the book is an extraordinary work of reportage, on a par with Anthony Shadid’s “Night Draws Near” (2005), which was itself built from tales of everyday Iraqis during the early days of the American occupation. Part of the power of these works surely comes from the simple but important fact that both reporters speak Arabic. ...Sensitive and perceptive, Mr. Hessler is a superb literary archaeologist, one who handles what he sees with a bit of wonder that he gets to watch the history of this grand city unfold, one day at a time.
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.