The dancehall divas who set the pace in Egypt’s roaring 20s

Midnight in Cairo tells how the city's vibrant nightlife was driven by female cabaret entertainers and club entrepreneurs

The birth of the women's movement in Egypt is not usually associated with music hall singers, dancers and actresses. But it was on the stages of theatres and nightclubs in Cairo, in the roaring 20s, that early feminists first asserted themselves, a new book will argue.

The capital's biggest stars were independent, transgressive Arabic-speaking women who, in the 1920s, were seeking to redefine their place in the world, according to Raphael Cormack, the author of Midnight in Cairo, out on 6 May.