This novella takes place in Cairo in 1912. Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner, Agent Onsi Youssef, work for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. Their newest case appears, initially, to involve a haunted tram car. However, they soon realize that there's something else going on. Unfortunately, knowing what they're dealing with isn't the same as actually solving the problem, considering the shoestring budget the Ministry has given them. The agents find themselves having to get a bit creative, with the assistance of some local women.

This was decent, and featured a few aspects that made me want to read more by this author. It's steampunk that, for once, isn't set in London. In fact, London didn't even come across as being particularly important - magic first entered this world via the work of a Sudanese man, who used a combination of alchemy and machinery to open a doorway to the world of the djinn. And although the book starred two male agents, women's suffrage was constantly in the background, and women played an important part in dealing with the being in the tram car. The few appearances of "boilerplate eunuchs" (robots) also fascinated me - some appeared to possess this world's version of artificial intelligence.

I'd happily read more stories starring Hamed, the experienced and somewhat grumpy agent, and Onsi, his shinier and more cheerful new partner, although I'd really love to read a full novel set in this world. From what I can tell, there's currently just one other story, "A Dead Djinn in Cairo," which stars Fatma el'Sha'arawi, the one female agent in the Ministry.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Thanks to Rosie Croft from Pen & Sword for providing me a paperback early copy of this book that I freely chose to review.

This is one of the types of books this publisher excels at. Experts on a topic with good access to images and visual resources create an informative and compelling narrative of a historically important subject or event, combining easy to read accounts with pictures and documents relevant to the matter that help make it more vivid and memorable in our minds.

In this case, the images of The National Archives about the Suffragettes serve to illustrate the story of the movement in the UK. The fact that the author was a records specialist at the National Archives is evident, as she wisely chooses, from what must be a large selection of material, a variety of documents: comic and cartoon images (of the disparaged “new woman”, wearing trousers or bloomers, ignoring her children, and smoking!), pictures of the women involved (including a fascinating one of Evelyn Manesta, or rather two, one showing clearly that she refused to have her picture taken and therefore somebody was holding her from the back, and then the manipulated version of it, where the person behind her had been removed. No Photoshop yet, but photo manipulation even in the early XX century was already in existence), letters from the women complaining about the conditions in prison, or the fact that they were treated like common criminals, a wonderful image of a boycotted census form, from 1911, with a handwritten note (No persons here, only women!), a picture from 4^th June 1913, at Epsom, the Derby Races, where we can see Emily Wilding Davison after being trampled by a horse and another picture of her funeral procession, images of the destruction caused when things escalated…

These wonderful —scary, moving, and incredible, at times— images are accompanied by a brief history of the movement for the women’s vote in the UK. The book is short (under 100 pages) and therefore this is not a very detailed account, but as an introduction to the topic it works well, as it includes the antecedents (how married women had been fighting to try to keep their property for decades, and how they became more and more frustrated on seeing how other countries in “the colonies” like New Zealand and Australia passed more advanced legislation an introduced women’s vote before the UK did), the development of the different associations (Manchester and the Pankhurst women play an important role), their initial peaceful tactics, their focus on deeds and increase in the visibility of their actions, imprisonment, hunger strikes, the pause during WWI (which not everybody was in agreement with), and the final achievement of some sort of vote after the war (in 1918, only for women over 30 who were property owners or married to property owners. It would take 10 years to normalise the situation). The summary is well-written and it is fairly comprehensive, considering the length of the book, although it won’t tell experts anything they didn’t already know.

Although the images include the archival reference, I missed a bibliography, a list of illustrations and an index, but otherwise I found the book great for reference, also as a book to complement a collection for those interested in the topic and a good introduction for people looking for an informative and easy to read account.

If readers are interested in knowing more about the Suffragettes and the efforts to achieve women’s vote in the UK, especially in a particular city or region, I recommend checking the publisher’s website, as they are continually updating their collection Struggle and Suffrage in… (which includes already many cities and counties: Manchester, Leeds, Wales…), and they have other books looking at some of the figures involved in the fight as well. I plan on talking about some of those soon.

Today I began reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's new biography of Thomas Cromwell. It's a book to which I had been looking forward to for awhile, and I had made it a point to carve out enough time to give it my full attention in preparation for my interview with MacCulloch himself next week.

Nevertheless, something was nagging me in the back of my head. A while back I had reached out to a historian named Sara Egge about featuring her book on women's suffrage in the Midwest. She responded positively, and I even received a copy of her book, but for some reason I didn't have an interview scheduled on my calendar.

Today I did what I should have done days ago, and I searched my account for our correspondence. Sure enough, it was there all right — we had agreed to do it this Friday! Now Cromwell is on the back-burner, as I'm scrambling to read Egge's (fortunately short) book in time for our interview. Clearly I need to work on my system.

Oh, goody, only 300 more pages of Maud's polemics. 

Don't get me wrong, this is an important book, but the delivery of Maud's argument is as elegant as cracking an egg with an ice axe.

At least the beauty of my Persephone copy of this book makes up for some of the lack of quality in the writing. 

Update - 30. Dec. 2017:

Markk is planning to join but with some deviations/additions to the list of books - deviations/addition that look great:

-  Eleanor Flexner: Century of Struggle - The Women's Rights Movement in the United States

- Ellen Carol DuBois: Feminism and Suffrage

-  Jad Adams: Women and the Vote: A World History.

I've created a Reading List for details of all the books I am considering* for this project, and I will update this post throughout the year with links to articles and books read for the project.

* Obviously, there are LOTS of books on the subject but my selection is limited to the books I am looking to read or consider for the project. 

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Project Overview:

2018 will mark the centenary of women gaining the right to vote in Germany and Britain. I have long been fascinated by the history of women's suffrage and thought it would be a great way to celebrate the anniversary by looking at the lead up, the campaigns, the people involved in the movement.

Of course, this is a topic that could easily consume a whole year of reading by itself - and quite rightly so - but chances are that I will want to read other books, too. So, I will try and direct my reading towards 4 main texts - each profiling the struggle for women's right to vote in Germany, Britain, the US, and one specifically on Scotland - because the movement here (Scotland) actually differed slightly to the more famous one in England (and because it was written by my old university prof.)

As one book always (always!!) leads to another, I expect that there will be a few other books (that I already own, thus chipping away at Mt. TBR) and links that will make an appearance during this reading project (which I will list below as I go along).

Illustration for Puck magazine by Harry Grant Dart (1908) - found here, which is also an excellent article (in The Appendix) about the illustration itself.