It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt (U of California Press, 2025) shows—the long history of women's activism that created the intellectual and political background for revolution. By centering the experiences and ideas of multiple generations of women activists and intellectuals, Lucia Sorbera traces the feminist genealogies of Egypt's nationalist, student, Marxist, labor, human rights, and democratic social movements. Biography of a Revolution gathers a series of interrelated intimate and relational stories, charting in vivid detail the entanglements between women's aspirations across a century of politics and friendships. This historical analysis innovatively deploys decolonial and indigenous feminist epistemologies, bringing women's, gender, and feminist history into the center of Egypt's political, social, and intellectual history. More than a decade after the 2013 military coup, women's intellectual and political activism remains crucial to keeping the embers of revolution aglow.

Lucia Sorbera is Associate Professor and Chair of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney.

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