In 2003, Rachel Aspden arrived in Egypt as a 23-year-old trainee journalist. She found a country on the brink of change. The two-thirds of Egypt's 80 million citizens under the age of 30 were stifled, broken, and frustrated, caught between a dictatorship that had nothing to offer them and their autocratic parents' generation, and left clinging to tradition and obedience by a lifetime of fear. In January 2011, the young people's patience ran out. They thought the revolution that followed would change everything for them. But as violence escalated, the economy collapsed and as the united front against Mubarak shattered into sectarianism, many found themselves wavering, hesitant to discard the old ways. Following the stories of four young Egyptians-- Amr the atheist software engineer, Amal the village girl who defied her family and her entire community, Ayman the one-time religious extremist and Ruqayah the would-be teenage martyr-- Generation Revolution unravels the complex forces shaping the lives of young people caught between tradition and modernity, and what their stories mean for the future of the Middle East.
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