The Rise and Fall of Alexandria - Birthplace of the Modern World

The Rise and Fall of Alexandria - Birthplace of the Modern World

by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid

Penguin, HK$152

Overheard at a literary lunch last month at M at the Fringe was a conversation about Egyptian-American author Andre Aciman, who had lunched there earlier and commented that Macau was a lot like Alexandria. Everything that made the city, its people and culture and historical architecture, has gone, subsumed by China in the first instance and Sunni Egypt in the second. The Rise and Fall of Alexandria is a tribute to the past greatness of the city, which today has little to show for having been founded by Alexander the Great in 332BC and having been 'the greatest mental crucible the world has ever known'. Justin Pollard and Howard Reid tell the story of the city 'where ideas ... were forged into intellectual constructs that far outlasted the city itself'. They conclude: 'Our politics may be modelled on Greek prototypes, our public architecture on Roman antecedents, but in our minds we are all children of Alexandria.' Their narrative applauds Alexandria as representing the pinnacle of classical achievement. The formerly Portuguese Macau was never a pinnacle of anything, but it did once have a certain charm.