Nadia Wassef, Egyptian bookseller and author of 'Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller', kindly accepted our invitation to the RISE Bookselling Conference 2025, where she delivered a brilliant keynote speech. She has agreed to share it with us in writing, so you can relive her words below.

I want to thank Rise Bookselling and the European and International Booksellers Federation for inviting me here today. I am both grateful and delighted to be among kindred spirits—booksellers, readers, and devoted champions of the written word.

In the company of booksellers, it feels only fitting to share a story. Because I grew up listening to, and reading, the abundance of tales that make up Alf Layla w Layla—what you may know as The Arabian Nights or The One Thousand and One Nights, storytelling is a habit. As both a bookseller and a writer, it is a compulsion. More than that, storytelling remains a way we process the world around us, drawing lessons and insights from it that may prove helpful in guiding us on our journey.

Just as Shahrazad’s tale provides a frame for countless stories and lessons, so too does Diwan’s. Though Diwan’s story unfolds in Egypt, far from Baltic and European lands, our shared calling as booksellers helps us transcend the differences and distances imposed by geography.

So, for a moment, let’s suspend time and place…

Our story begins one evening in 2001 where five friends gathered for dinner—Ziad, Aly, Nihal, my sister Hind, and me. Our conversation drifted from idle chatter to purposeful dreaming: 'If you could do anything, what would it be?” The answer: “Open a bookstore.” The next day, we three women continued the conversation to include types of books, curated shelves, location, interiors, feel, and vibe. After much paperwork, leg work, long discussions, and even longer days and nights, Diwan Bookstore finally opened its doors on Friday, March 8^th, 2002—coinciding with International Women’s Day. Nestled on a main road in Zamalek, a vibrant district of Cairo, an island in the middle of the River Nile, surrounded by the Sahara Desert.

We were three women armed with little more than guts, dreams, and the unwavering prayers of our mothers—along with a blissful ignorance of all that could go wrong. What we lacked was just as telling: no warehouse, no industry knowledge, no revolving capital, and—perhaps most crucially—no business plan or business know-how. Well, that’s not entirely true. In the early 1990s, during my university years, I took a single business class. Its cardinal rule? Never go into business with family or friends. I did both. Yet, while ignorance may not be bliss, it offers something just as powerful: the absence of fear. And in that freedom, we found the courage to make bold choices, guided not by limitations but by possibilities.

Our first bold decision was that Diwan—Egypt’s first modern-style bookstore—would be more than just a place to buy books. It would offer Arabic, English, and French titles alongside music, films, and stationery, all centred around a café that seamlessly connected these sections. The café invited customers to linger—to browse, to meet fellow readers, or simply to exist in a place that asked nothing of them, yet offered belonging, community, and the quiet joy of being surrounded by stories.

Bookstores have been dubbed many things: heartbeats of communities, secular places of worship, shrines to knowledge. I think of them as public places where personal quests unfold, commercial spaces where you don’t have to practise commerce, somewhere to escape the world, or engage more fully with it. But perhaps what we don’t think of bookstores as being, are characters with personalities, and identities that change over time. And in this thought lies our second bold decision: making DIWAN a brand with a purpose, a living being with a mission. When the graphic artist charged with designing Diwan’s logo asked us to describe our brand as if she were a person, we told her that she wasindeed a person, and this was her story:

Diwan was conceived as a reaction to a world that had stopped caring about the written word. Because her name can mean a collection of poetry in Persian and Arabic, a calligraphy script, a meeting place, a guesthouse, and a sofa, she is different things to different people. She welcomes and respects others in all their differences. She doesn’t like numbers and balance sheets. She doesn’t like the binary world that surrounds her, and she is set on changing it, one book at a time. She believes that North and South, East and West are restrictive terms, so she brings together and mixes people, ideas, and cultures. She makes book buying a joyful interactive experience. She cherishes her past and her many heritages, while using them as a springboard catapulting her into an exciting future.

The graphic designer listened and produced a strikingly bold logo: she wrote D-I-W-A in an eccentric black font, adding the “N” in Arabic. This last letter—a nod to nuun al-niswa and nuun al-inath— genders verbs, adjectives, and nouns to the feminine. Then she surrounded the entire word with Arabic diacritics, at once challenging and dismantling the binary of “East” and “West” both visually and metaphorically.

With our visual identity in place, we encountered the next challenge: how to disseminate it. And so came our third bold decision. Throughout this conference, we will learn how booksellers engage with their communities through social media, digital channels, and other outreach methods. But our story unfolds in the early 2000s—before the rise of social media and its boundless avenues for connection. In Cairo in 2002, we confronted two obstacles: we couldn’t afford traditional print or advertising to reach our target audience, and whatever modest marketing budget we had, I had already squandered on exquisitely designed shopping bags. These bags featured our bold logo over a rich, layered tapestry of typography and modernized Arabo-Islamic patterns. To our surprise, they became a phenomenon. The Diwan shopping bag evolved into a cultural status symbol, a silent declaration of a shared love for reading and a deep pride in our literary heritage. Soon, they were travelling the globe. Years later, spotting one on a London street or a New York subway was electrifying. Recognizing their impact, we chose to amplify it: each anniversary, store opening, or literary milestone inspired a new bag design, celebrating Sufi poetry, forgotten writers, and visionary artists. From there, we expanded—creating bookmarks, cards, candles, and wrapping paper, all with one goal: reintegrating the written word into everyday life. The bags also shaped our marketing philosophy—Diwan never paid for above-the-line advertising. We bartered book reviews and recommendations in print media in exchange for our logo’s presence, expanding our reach organically. And so, what began as an unintentional consequence of my strained relationship with numbers became our third bold decision.

Boldness, however, leaves ample room for disaster. Our first five years were a success—we had defied the skeptics and proven that a modern-style bookstore, founded by three women with no industry experience, could not only exist but thrive. Diwan’s unexpected success placed us at a crossroads. As with all pioneering ventures, our path had inspired others to follow. Imitators and knockoffs were sprouting across the city, forcing us to make a choice: maintain the status quo or raise funds for an ambitious expansion. But could we replicate the magic of our first store without compromising its authenticity? Success once did not guarantee success again. For the first time, we were divided on what was best for Diwan. Steadfast Nihal wanted to preserve what we had built. Ambitious Hind saw expansion as the only way forward—go big or go home. And I stood between them, torn by both perspectives. Consensus, the very foundation of our partnership as friends, sisters, and co-founders, slipped beyond our grasp

Despite our uncertainty, we took the leap. Six years after the first branch, we opened a second, a third, and a fourth. By 2010, we had ten branches—and were teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Ceasing production of the Diwan bags I was so proud of was the first of many cost-cutting measures. We closed stores, let people go, and did everything possible to salvage what remained. In December 2010, I remember asking Hind and Nihal, 'What else could possibly go wrong?' The answer came the following month. In January 2011, protests erupted in the streets of Egypt, soon escalating into full-scale revolution.

Reading about revolutions in history books is one thing; living through one is another. Revolutions are cataclysmic. Emotions run high. Discontent and hope flourish side by side. Ancient fault lines crack open. Nothing is tidy. Nothing is clear. As an Egyptian, I felt a cautious optimism. As a business owner, I dreaded the cost of chaos. Instability may benefit stock market volatility indices, but it is ruinous for businesses like ours. The months that followed were emotionally and financially draining. Marches and protests swept through every city. Curfews and blocked roads strangled commerce. Our seven remaining stores and 108 staff members faced daily uncertainty. Revenue plummeted. People were buying food, not books.

At the end of every quarter, I would will the next to be better. But no matter what we did, it never was. Our cycles of success and failure, profit and loss, felt unbreakable. As we sank deeper into the red, Hind, Nihal, and I wrestled with our options. Nihal insisted we had to close more stores. Hind believed we had to push forward until we made ends meet. I didn’t know what to think—I was exhausted. Our dream had become distant, unwieldy. I feared that Diwan, the very character, persona, brand, we had nurtured, was now resisting us, punishing us for our ambition. But we kept each other afloat. Some days, Nihal lost hope; other days, I did. Hind, ever resolute, reminded us that everything was transient.

And so it passed. It took seven years to claw our way back into the black. The landscape shifted—people left, others returned; we lost a partner but gained three. Under the leadership of our new partner, Amal Mahmoud, we closed some stores and opened others. Then, in 2021, two of our partners, Layal al-Rustom and Ahmed Al-Qarmalawi, set their sights on a new frontier. Diwan Publishing was born, ushering in an exciting new chapter. We became the Arabic publishers of Egypt’s Nobel Laureate, Naguib Mahfouz, championing literary icons and emerging voices.

Earlier this month, leaner yet reimagined, we celebrated our 23rd anniversary—marking a journey that now includes nine branches, a seasonal store on Egypt’s north coast, two mobile trucks, a publishing house, and a much-expanded café. This milestone was not merely reached, but forged—through triumph, near extinction, survival, and the pursuit of resurgence. Our story echoes that of countless independent bookstores: an unyielding cycle of reinvention, resilience, and hope.

Like those who survived the last decades, it’s easy to ascribe cause after the fact and talk about grit, experimentation, resilience, and any number of attributes we would like to bestow on ourselves, just as we assign a host of reasons to explain away those who didn’t. I’ve come to believe that bookselling is like marriage and football: while a tremendous amount of skill and hard work is needed, fate and luck play a role.

After twenty-three years of being suspended between survival and extinction—enduring a global financial crisis, a revolution, a counter-revolution, a global pandemic, five currency devaluations (not to mention the everyday trials of our noble endeavour, bookselling)—I believe I am qualified to share a few lessons or suggestions amassed from this painful yet joyful experiment—some specific, others more general.

Fifteen years ago, industry experts predicted the global demise of physical books and the extinction of booksellers and their brick-and-mortar stores. Today, however, those same experts celebrate the resilience of the book and the resurgence of independent booksellers. While nearly every aspect of the industry—except for the book itself—has been digitized, from production to retail, paper and ink endure. Keith Houston, in The Book: A Cover-To-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time, captures this paradox:

After more than a thousand years as the world’s most important form of written record, the book as we know it faces an unknown future. Just as paper superseded parchment, movable type put scribes out of a job, and the codex, or paged book, overtook the papyrus scroll, so computers and electronic books threaten the very existence of the physical book.

So why have books been the outliers so far? For instance, the music and film industries and their retailers did not survive the digital onslaught, as the product and its distribution merged into the seamless, downloadable song and streamable movie. Books, however, have persisted—not only because of their intrinsic appeal but also due to the grit and ingenuity of booksellers who have made themselves indispensable to the experience of buying a book.

Booksellers have evolved from silent purveyors of a bookshop’s key but intangible commodity—the browsing experience—into the architects of literary communities. They have transformed the purchase of a book into something far richer than a mere transaction.

If online retail is designed to eliminate “friction”—those moments of pause, choice, and contemplation that might slow a purchase—then bookselling thrives on precisely that. The charm of a physical bookstore lies in its ability to embrace serendipity, to create moments of discovery that algorithms cannot replicate.

While book signings and launches have long been a staple of bookselling, their significance has only deepened over time. These events do more than promote books; they forge relationships—between writers and readers, and among readers. They make the intangible tangible, turning interaction into community and reminding us of what the hyper-efficient digital world so often lacks.

However, fostering this deep connection between readers and books requires more than an inviting space with exciting events—it requires the right people. At a time when customer service was rarely a cornerstone of retail in Egypt, Diwan placed a profound emphasis on readers and their experiences. Our greatest asset wasn’t the selection on our shelves or the interiors of our stores but the passionate individuals we entrusted to champion those books.

In our early years, one of our greatest challenges wasn’t Egypt’s infamous bureaucracy or the lack of a bookselling infrastructure where Arabic books sometimes lacked ISBNs. It was something more fundamental: the absence of a shared understanding of what a bookseller truly was. The job description simply didn’t exist. There were approximations—a librarian, a literature student, a generic salesperson—none of which fully captured the essence of the role. So, we built it from the ground up. We sought individuals with curiosity and warmth rather than prior retail or literary expertise, believing that a love of learning was more valuable than pre-existing knowledge. Training extended beyond manuals categorizing key authors and their works, cross-selling, and upselling; it was about forging a connection between books and readers. It was about placing a book in a customer’s hands, suggesting another, maintaining eye contact, never turning away. Over time, this new generation of booksellers became more than just ambassadors for literature—they became the pulse of Diwan. They relayed insights from the shop floor to the central office, shaping our decisions in real time. They identified emerging trends, recognized shifting reader interests, and advised on which titles to spotlight—or retire—to make space for the new. Through their daily interactions, they didn’t just sustain Diwan; they defined her.

How, then, do we—as booksellers of today’s world—recruit, train, and retain the booksellers of tomorrow? Let’s begin with the most obvious challenge: bookselling, as a commercial endeavor, has rarely been sustainable. Historically, bookstores have relied on supplementary sales—blotters and inkwells in the early twentieth century, coffee and electronics today—to support their bottom line. Yet, despite its vital role in cultural life, bookselling remains one of the most overlooked and undervalued professions.

But we are more than mere sellers of books. In our daily work, we cultivate a uniquely complex skill set that blends business, academia, and service. We balance knowledge of books, people, numbers, shop maintenance, and the art of instant problem-solving. By all measures, these abilities could earn us more in another field. And yet, what we seek is not just financial reward, but purpose and meaning.

To attract future booksellers, we must find those who crave both. We need individuals who view bookselling not merely as a job, but as a calling. They heed the call out of love and dedication, knowing that little can compensate them for what they give of themselves. And with that calling comes a sure defiance—an acceptance that this path often contradicts one’s economic self-interest. That should be our selling point, not something we apologize for—you could make a little more doing something else, but will you be as fulfilled? In short, future booksellers need to be both a little foolish and a little fantastic.

The curse and blessing of bookselling and booksellers is that we have always thrived on the edge of extinction, constantly reinventing ourselves and our craft. But it’s not just the economics of bookselling that pose a threat. Readers today are conscious of the power of their loyalty and their money, and they choose to use or withhold both accordingly: while buying a book from Amazon might be cheaper and faster, some opt to buy from other online—or indeed bricks-and-mortar—sellers in support of them and in protest against corporate giants. This means bookstores must do more than sell books; they must stand for something. Readers need to know who we are and what we represent, so they can choose to engage or disengage with us financially and ideologically.

The modern obsession with likes and clicks, engagement and monetization, often obscures something deeply human—the desire to be seen and understood. This realization reframes the role of booksellers: we don’t just sell books; we strike up conversations. Bookselling is a dialogue, and like any dialogue, some drive it, participate in it, interrupt it, or simply eavesdrop on it. This brings us to our next challenge: how do we keep the conversation going once we’ve secured a customer’s attention?

At Diwan, our book displays were an extension of that conversation. It was no accident that I placed a stack of Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power next to Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, or Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red beside Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. I often wondered how books would be received depending on their categorization. The first time I walked into Daunt’s on Marylebone High Street in London and saw fiction arranged by the author's nationality rather than alphabetically, I realized how much presentation shapes perception; and how important it is to do things in your own way. Could The Arabian Nights be read as a guide to surviving patriarchy? Could Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet be shelved under Pregnancy and Parenting?

That got us thinking: what would a section unique to Diwan look like? From the beginning, we knew Diwan would sell books in Arabic, English, and French. However, we also knew these linguistic categories were porous, so we created a section called Egypt Essentials, which houses all three languages and cuts across genres. Like science fiction authors, we built a world that existed only in our imagination. On its shelves, we wove a modern mythology using fiction, biography, history, economics, and photography. There was a reason our section name was plural: any singular narrative of Egypt—or of any country—is misleading. Egypt Essentials didn’t seek to provide answers; it posed questions. It introduced the colonizer to the colonized, the historian to the novelist, the local to the outsider, and invited them to get acquainted.

If booksellers sell the intangible commodity of browsing, then how we curate, and what we choose to present matters. It defines who we are as booksellers. I often debated with my fellow booksellers over how much space should be allocated to literature versus self-help. It highlighted a fundamental struggle: as a bookseller, my duty was to challenge and broaden readers’ horizons. As a business owner, I owed my partners and my balance sheet the highest margins and the largest sales volumes I could generate. As a passionate reader, I allowed myself the luxury of occupying the latitudes of love and hate. I was thrilled to be selling the books of Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, yet frustrated by the sheer volume of self-help books flying off the shelves. What we promote, what we allocate space to—it all speaks to the evolving identities of our bookshops

With evolution comes a shift in scale. Many bookstores find themselves caught in an in-between space: too large to be niche, boutique operations, yet too small to be chains. This middle ground presents a unique challenge, particularly when it comes to location. Where can we afford to exist? Physical space entails costs which impose limitations, forcing us to make deliberate choices about our identity and purpose. In the quest for innovative ideas for bookshop longevity we experiment with different formulations—forging alliances with community centers, cafés, concept stores—searching for the right balance and the next thing. We diversify product mixes, seek alternative revenue streams, and engage in activities such as publishing, striving to expand our presence and purpose.

For Diwan, already with its cafés and publishing house, this meant evolving into a cultural hub. Over the past year, under the expert guidance of Brigitte Boulad, Diwan’s PR & Cultural Development guru, we have built bridges beyond our bookstore’s walls, launching initiatives such as Climate Connect (conversations on climate issues), the Hiwar Series (discussions on Arab art), and What is Narrative? (conversations with artists and filmmakers). Alongside these talks, we organize hands-on workshops in yoga, creative writing, woodworking, metalwork, and other crafts.

But while physical space constrains us, digital space is limitless. Online, we can showcase infinite titles, yet the transactional nature of e-commerce strips away the serendipity of discovery. The magic of bookstores—the laughter, the conversations, the shared recommendations—cannot be replicated digitally. This is why bricks-and-mortar stores—often celebrated as third spaces where communities form—remain essential. Perhaps bookshops need to create a third persona, a hybrid—a strong digital presence and an even stronger material one offering similar but unique experiences.

The future, with all its uncertainty, will continue to test us. In addition to the already herculean list of qualities, we need a spirit of experimentation to navigate it. Observe the experiments of others, but above all, conduct your own. Innovation is vital, but it comes at a cost borne by the innovator, not the imitator. Consider this: when Diwan began, we were pioneers, launching Egypt’s first modern-style bookstore. Many doubted we would survive. But once we did, others followed. And while imitation may be a form of flattery, it does not shape markets with skill or vision. The result? A stagnant sector that failed to evolve in new and exciting directions. No one seized the opportunity to open a children’s or travel bookstore. Instead of fostering horizontal market growth, we faced a vertical plunge—a race to the bottom driven by price wars in an industry already burdened by slim margins.

At Diwan, we continue to take the gamble of innovation—the only insurance policy against the future worth having. We continue to develop Diwan’s identity in unexpected ways; we surprise ourselves and our readers. In the run-up to launching our book delivery service, and while we were waiting for all the permits and paperwork, I parked the motorcycle surrounded by towering heaps of books in one of the shop windows, creating a display so unexpected it made passersby stop, stare, and smile. It was also cost-free advertising. On another occasion, I placed an aquarium in the middle of the children’s section of one of our stores—this was during the height of Finding Nemo mania. As a parent of two young children, I had cartoons playing in the background of my life. It didn’t work out as I’d hoped, but I’m glad I tried it. Today, we continue to play with AI, experimenting with what it can offer us if we nourish it. Because if we are to grow, we must try. And if we must try, we must be willing to fail. As Samuel Beckett, my favorite pessimist, once wrote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

I began this talk by recounting the bold decisions we made—choices often driven by the fearless ignorance that comes with not knowing any better. Some led to success, others to failure. I won’t pretend that these choices didn’t take a toll on my relationship with Hind and Nihal. Just as we shared our triumphs, we divided our disasters equally among ourselves. We were too mindful of one another’s feelings to inflict wounds that might never heal. More seasoned businessmen might not have shown such restraint. But we weren’t seasoned, nor were we men. Each of us navigated failure, strained relationships, and our ever-evolving bond with Diwan in our own way. We stepped away at different times—especially during the years of financial collapse, which we wryly dubbed the red years. I turned to writing, and in so doing, I found a way to untangle the complexities of my relationship with my sister, my friend, my partner, and Diwan herself.

I left Cairo and Diwan in 2015 to return to school, moving to London to pursue a Master’s in Creative Writing. When I graduated in 2017, my thesis advisor told me that the story of Diwan wasn’t the story I wanted to write—it was the story I needed to write. I spent the next two years avoiding that truth, avoiding myself. These were still the red years.

I clung to the belief that Diwan, my firstborn—now a teenager—had developed a will of her own, rebelling against me, her mother. She rejected my plans at every turn, resisting my control. However, our relationship changed the moment I stopped dictating and began listening. The more I wrote, the more I unearthed the lessons Diwan had been attempting to teach me. Diwan has shown me that failure and success are not adversaries, but friends locked in an embrace. She continues to remind me that human relationships matter. Bookstores attract a special type of person, and they all share one common trait—they want to know things about things, and about themselves.

Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller was published in 2021 and has since been translated into twelve languages. My journey with the book has taken me across the world—to Japan, Italy, France, the U.S., and beyond—where I have spoken about Cairo, Diwan, and the experience of three women who stepped into the unknown and continue to learn from it.

Yet, it wasn’t until last month that I gave my first talk about my book in Cairo. Standing inside the walls of Diwan in Zamalek, where it all started twenty-three years ago, I found it difficult to call myself a writer. I still felt, at my core, like a bookseller. But then, I thought of The Arabian Nights—and its most compelling figure, Scheherazade. Brilliant and eloquent, she volunteers to marry King Shahryar, determined to break his cycle of executing his brides. With intelligence, wit, and a deep knowledge of literature, history, and human nature, she spins captivating tales each night, stopping at a cliffhanger to ensure her survival for one more day—one more story.

Every bookseller is a Scheherazade of sorts, sustaining not only themselves but their entire community and cohort through the power of storytelling. With each recommendation, each conversation, and each reinvention, we prolong the life of bookselling— for one more day, for one more story.