Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it, edited by Nadia Idle and Alex Nunns

Tweets From Tahrir

Egypt’s revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it

Foreword by AHDAF SOUEIF

“My favorite bit is Hosni Mubarak has tweets in this book...I don't think it's really him.” —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

“Deeply moving, a record of great courage, mostly by young people, facing Mubarak's legion of goons and regime thugs.” —Robert Fisk, The Independent

“Without the new media the Egyptian Revolution could not have happened in the way that it did. The causes of the revolution were many; deep-rooted and long seated. The turning moment had come – but it was the instant and wide-spread nature of the new media that made it possible to recognise the moment and to push it into such an effective manifestation.”—Ahdaf Soueif, from the foreword

Read live tweets from Tahrir Square by the contributors to the book

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About the Book

The Twitter accounts of the activists who brought heady days of revolution to Egypt in January and February this year paint an exhilarating picture of an uprising in real-time. Thousands of young people documented on cell phones every stage of their revolution, as it happened. This book brings together a selection of key tweets in a compelling, fast-paced narrative, allowing the story of the uprising to be told directly by the people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Many of the activists were “citizen journalists”, using Twitter to report what was happening. Others used the social network to organize, communicating the next steps necessary for the revolution to move forward. Nearly everyone online gave instant reactions to the extraordinary events occurring before their eyes.

History has never before been written in this fashion. The tweet limit of 140 characters evidently concentrated the feelings of those using Twitter. Raw emotion bursts from their messages, whether frantic alarm at attacks from pro-government thugs or delirious happiness at the fall of the dictator. To read these tweets is to embark a rollercoaster ride, from the surprise and excitement of the first demonstration, to the horror of the violence that claimed hundreds of lives, to the final ecstasy of victory.

Many of those tweeting also took photographs with their phones and these illustrate the book, providing remarkable snapshots from the heart of the action.

Edited by young activists Alex Nunns and Nadia Idle, an Egyptian who was in Tahrir Square when Mubarak fell, Tweets from Tahrir is a highly original take on one of the most important and dramatic events in recent world politics. The result is as gripping as any thriller – but it’s all real.

“A compelling and unique story of the popular uprising that rid Egypt of a three decade-old dictatorship in just 18 days” —Bob Garfield, On the Media, NPR

“I just got my copy of “Tweets from Tahrir”!… Lots of great #Jan25 revolutionaries in there. Yalla #Egypt!” —@MonaEltahawy, award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues

“A feat of nearly real-time publishing.” —The New York Times

Publication April 21st 2011 • 234 pages • Black and white illustration throughout
paperback ISBN 978-1-935928-45-4 • ebook ISBN 978-1-935928-46-1

About the Editors

Nadia Idle is half-English, half-Egyptian, grew up in Egypt and now lives in London. She studied the odd and wonderful combination of Anthropology, Theater and Biology at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and later obtained an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, London. She works at War on Want, is a member of Barking Bateria, and campaigns against injustices big and small as a way of life. Her great beef is the privatisation of public goods and spaces, and don’t even get her started on bottled water.

Alex Nunns is a writer, editor and activist. He worked as Jeremy Corbyn’s speechwriter from 2018-20. His book, The Candidate won the 2017 Bread and Roses Award. Tweets from Tahrir, which he co-edited, was the first book to use content from Twitter as the basis for a historical narrative. As a journalist he has written for Le Monde Diplomatique and Red Pepper, among others.

Born in Cairo, Ahdaf Soueif is the award-winning author of a number of widely-praised books, among them The Map of Love (1999), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has sold over a million copies.