Cairo, Lives in the Abyss

A portrait of the voiceless of Cairo, the great capital of the Arabs

Cairo is a colossus of twenty million souls prone to insomnia and chaos. A human swarm full of stories that mark the pulse of a megalopolis in the most dizzying decade of its recent history. This book brings us closer to the daily adventure of a correspondent who lived more than ten years in the city from an amalgam of unique and surprising encounters: a state executioner, a woman cab driver, the mother of one of the 9/11 terrorists, the brother of the current leader of Al Qaeda and an interview with President Abdelfatah al Sisi.

Through chapters that lay biographies bare, Francisco Carrión gives voice to many of those who have been denied it, those who struggle in a hostile and suffocating territory. This is a chronicle of resilience and overcoming in a city that fascinates the West, where its people live on the edge, amid social abysses.