About the Author

Ian Bassingthwaigthe was a Fulbright Grantee in Egypt in 2009, where he worked in a legal aid office that served refugees from Iraq, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. He has been honored with Hopwood Awards for both novel writing and short fiction. He was also named as a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative. His work has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun, Tin House, The Rumpus, and many other publications. Live from Cairo is his first novel.

Reviews

"Urgent, informed, and richly detailed... [A] suspenseful, bittersweet narrative... Absorbing and important reading."-- "Library Journal, starred review"

"Live from Cairo is a powerful novel about human lives running up against inhuman systems: an impotent bureaucracy, a corrupt government, a brutal military. It's a story of triumphant love and heartbreaking injustice, a story about how difficult the world makes it for any one person to do the right thing. Ian Bassingthwaighte has written an important and necessary book."--Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix

"Ian Bassingthwaite's Live From Cairo is, as the title suggests, a living, animate, remarkable novel written with an energy rarely found in debut novels. With its sweeping eye for sizzling detail, this portrait of wanderers from different lands in a troubled Middle East is urgent and fiercely engaging."--Chigozie Obioma, Booker Shortlisted author of The Fishermen