Stories from the Egyptian revolution

'Circling the Square: Stories from the Egyptian Revolution' by Wendell Steavenson (HarperCollins, 367 pages, $27)

The fifth anniversary of the Egyptian uprising in January passed almost without notice internationally. The paranoid Sisi regime cracked down on any potential unrest at home, while attention abroad was focused on conflagrations elsewhere in the Middle East. The optimistic story of the Arab Spring has long since deteriorated to a grim landscape of proxy wars and sectarian conflict.

The publication of Wendell Steavenson's "Circling the Square" marked five years since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Steavenson, a New Yorker staff writer who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Georgia, was in Egypt during the chaotic revolution and its aftermath. "Circling the Square" is a blow-by-blow account of the mayhem. It doesn't give the reader a broader, wide-angle historical perspective, but it thrillingly embodies the maxim that journalism is the first draft of history. 

Its author recognizes this herself. Many chapters are fragmentary, full of cut frames and scenes. Steavenson returns impulsively to Tahrir Square, the cradle of protest and Egypt's political barometer for two tumultuous years: Through the first demonstrations against Mubarak in January 2011, the pandemonium in the months after he fell, and the turbulent experiment in democracy that ended with the military coup against Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood-backed government in July 2013. 

Steavenson admits to feeling doubt, insecurity and often sheer incomprehension. "During the many occasions I was present during fighting, riots, rock throwing, I began to realize that witnessing something did not give you any good sense of what had really happened...