Broken Spring: An American-Israeli reporter's close-up view of how Egyptians lost their struggle for freedom

by Mark Lavie

In Broken Spring, veteran Middle East correspondent Mark Lavie provides a vivid, in-depth, hands-on view of Egypt’s society and the turmoil it is undergoing. He examines its people, its politics and its Islamic orientation, and explains how and why the West gets so many things wrong in the Middle East. Lavie walks readers through everyday life in Egypt, meeting people and sharing their moods and hardships. He explains why democracy doesn’t work in Egypt, why the economy is in shambles – and what it would take to fix it. From his post in Cairo, Lavie evaluates similar and parallel developments all over the region, and Western responses. Building on decades of reporting in Israel and the Palestinian areas, he assesses Israel’s role in Arab Spring and its own perception of the events. He watches as the once proud and prominent Egyptian Jewish community withers and dies, literally, with the passing of its leader.

Genres: Politics

245 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 13, 2014

About the author

MARK LAVIE is an American-Israeli journalist who has been covering the Middle East since 1972. For most of his career, he was based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He served as radio broadcaster, print wire reporter and editor for the Associated Press, and broadcast for radio networks including NPR, NBC and CBC. He has covered conflicts, starting with the 1973 Yom Kippur Mideast war, and peace efforts like the Israeli-Palestinian partial peace accords, for which he won the prestigious Lowell Thomas Award for Best Radio Interpretation of Foreign Affairs. After reporting on two Palestinian uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Lavie transferred to Egypt on a two-year assignment in 2011, in time for all the major events of Arab Spring.

Reviews

[Rory Carr · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an American-Israeli living in Egypt, Lavie has an interesting perspective on his host country and its politics - an outsider on the inside.
This is an easy to read collection of more-or-less standalone chapters: it reads like a collection of columns from a weekend newspaper.
It's personal, witty, with a genuine affection for the Egyptian people. There is also quite a bit of repetition, which reinforces the idea that we are reading a collection of discrete columns or blog posts rather than a coherent book.
Sometimes it veers away from the core topic of Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolutions, to take in Israel and Palestine - probably inevitable given the author's background and Egypt's key role in that conflict.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good introductory read on present day Egypt and the politics of the region. To begin with it reads like a string of brief news articles about the current political climate and realities of life in Cairo for a foreign resident. Lavie's home is in Israel and he took a 2 year assignment from 2011 to be placed in Cairo and report from there. The chapters, while a bit haphazad and short, are quite illuminating and he often compares life in Cairo to life in Israel, There were a couple of interesting chapters about women and their rights, especially in their treatment in public, Lavie saw this up close when his wife came for an extended stay. The focus shifts a bit to cover past and present Jewish life in Egypt, Israeli politics and the Middle East in general with the current rise of Islamism. I enjoyed Lavie's humour and his personal insights into daily life, the friendly people he encounters and his analysis of the political and economic turmoil that Egypt has been through in the past few years. Overall Lavie insists Egypt's biggest problem is economic not political.

[jwals · Rating 2 out of 5]

After two years in Cairo during the “Arab Spring”, Mark Lavie offers a collection of views and observations on woman’s place in Egypt; the local and national economy, the inability of parties to form a coalition, and inability of a party to govern in their own right or at least with the tacit approval or backing of the military.
The last chapter just leaves me up in the air.