The City Always Wins: Omar Robert Hamilton - Softcover

Hamilton, Omar Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 057133265X ISBN 13: 9780571332656

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2017

Synopsis

The City Always Wins is a remarkable novel from the psychological heart of a revolution. From the communal highs of pitched night battles against the police in Cairo to the solitary lows of defeated exile in New York, Omar Robert Hamilton's debut is a unique immersion into one of the key chapters of the 21st century.

Bringing to life the 2011 Egyptian revolution, The City Always Wins conveys with extraordinary intensity all the stages of that place and that time through the lives of its two main characters Mariam and Khalil, ordinary young people caught up in an extraordinary moment.

Furthermore, The City Always Wins is a novel not just about Egypt's revolution but about a global generation that tried to change the world.

Reminiscent of the writing of Jeet Thayil, Zia Haider Rahma and Nadeem Aslam, Hamilton's prose is arrestingly visual, intensely lyrical and uncompromisingly political. A genuinely exciting new writer, he looks set to become a defining voice of his generation.

About this title

Review:

An astounding debut novel. (Guardian)

Unbearable. Unmissable. A dazzling debut. (Naomi Klein)

Vividly brings to life the failed revolution of 2011 on the streets of Cairo, in all its youthful bravery and naïve utopianism. (J. M. Coetzee)

Compelling . . . Hamilton is to be commended for his vivid and sensitive depiction of one of the most important events in recent world history. (Literary Review)

A picture so vivid and powerful that it gives a passionate life and reality to what might have been perceived only as abstract principles . . . It will be a long time before we read anything so skilfully brought to life. (Philip Pullman)

The City Always Wins is a stirring, clear, humane and immensely savvy novel about political innocence and fearlessness. Its fictive portrayals of the Egyptian 'revolution' of 2011 are nothing less than ground-breaking. (Richard Ford)

Book Description:

A thrilling and important debut about the Arab Spring - and a generation that tried to change to the world - from an exciting and talented new voice.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 057133265X
• ISBN 13: 9780571332656
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240