Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller

The streets of Cairo make strange music: the echoing calls to prayer, the raging insults hurled between drivers, the steady crescendo of horns honking, the shouts of street vendors, the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she founded Diwan, a fiercely independent bookstore. They were three young women with no business degrees, no formal training, and nothing to lose. At the ti...