Description: Beverley Butler's ethnography of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina project critiques the underlying western foundational concepts and values behind the Library in a nuanced postcolonial examination of memory, cultural revival, and homecoming.
Review Quotes: "Return to Alexandria is an outstanding, utterly original achievement. Beverley Butler has not merely provided the missing case-study which shows finally how 'revivalism' works. In her rare combination of reportage, theoretical discussion and often witty analysis, she also brings together almost for the first time the successive 'Western' treatments of the past with the whole discourse of post-colonial culture." --Neal Ascherson, author, journalist and editor of the journal Public Archaeology