Keren Zdafee, Cartooning for a Modern Egypt, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2019
The Egyptian modern caricature is generally studied as part of Egypt’s mass culture, and mainly discussed in the context of Egypt’s anti-colonial resistance to British foreign rule—as part of the forging of Egypt’s “national style”. In Cartooning for a Modern Egypt, Keren Zdafee foregrounds the role thחברat Egypt’s foreign-local entrepreneurs and caricaturists played in formulating and constructing the modern Egyptian caricature of the interwar years, as a cultural product that was designated for, and reflected, a colonial and cosmopolitan culture of a few. By adopting a theoretical, semiotic, and historical approach, Keren Zdafee illustrates how Egyptian foreign-local caricaturists envisioned and evaluated the past, present, and future of Egyptian society, in the context of Cairo’s colonial cosmopolitanism.