[Review of: S. Salem (2020) Anticolonial afterlives in Egypt : the politics of hegemony; N.C. Pratt (2020) Embodying geopolitics : generations of women's activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon]

This review discusses two novel contributions to a post-colonial understanding of geopolitics in the Middle-East: “Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony” by Sara Salem and “Embodying geopolitics: Generations of women’s activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon” by Nicola Pratt. Both books analyse the economy, rules, political institutions, societal dynamics and popular resistance through a post-colonial lens, showing the importance of what Bhambra (2014) calls connected sociologies. That is a historical approach that seeks to avoid universalist and Eurocentric claims about history, following instead those mutually constructed events that constitute world politics, including postcolonial hierarchies, forms of resistance and interconnectedness. Although the books take a different approach to studying socio-political transformation in the Middle-East – with Salem’s book using hegemony as a framework and Pratt’s discussing embodied gender politics – the books also speak to each other in beautiful ways.