Fictionalizing Egypt’s Protests

Leslie Croxford  is best known to the world as the author of “Solomon’s Folly” arguably, the first book in a genre of historical fiction which focuses on the foreign communities forced out of Egypt by the 1952 revolution. Leslie returned to Cairo and is currently the Academic Director of the British University in Egypt. He joins us in this conversation to discuss hies next work of “fiction.”  Leslie is in the process of writing a book within a book which blends his life with the is semi-autobiographical events that are occuring in the Middle East right now.   His new book follows an Egyptian ex-patriat who returns to his home country to write a novel that is very similar to “Solomon’s Folly.” Things take a turn when his character gets caught in the middle of the recent protests that  toppled the Mubarak regime.  Leslie’s protagonist puts down his work and instead pens a non-fiction that he hopes will shape the unknown future, rather than describe the troubled past, of his home country.