The Arab Spring’s best legacy: Egyptians are now reading once-banned books

posted on: Apr 16, 2015

In his 25 years manning a stall at Cairo’s storied Ezbekiya book market, Ali El Shaer has often had to revise his stock. When local students favored socialist treatises, he bought Karl Marx by the carton. As the country grew more socially conservative, he lined his rickety shelves with ornate Qurans and histories of the Prophet Mohammed’s life.
The past few years, however, have created a demand for an altogether different variety of literature.
“People want things they couldn’t really read before,” he said, grinning as he pushed aside a stack of medical textbooks to reveal two leather-bound Arabic editions of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, which is deemed blasphemous by many Muslims. “After the revolution, they just want to be challenged.”

Source: qz.com