On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt Paperback - 2013

" [On Time] constitutes a fascinating contribution to a growing field of inquiry - namely, the social construction of time in colonial contexts. Through a close reading of a breathtaking variety of sources, ranging from newspapers to fatwas, from advice books to train schedules, On Barak develops a compelling narrative of how Egyptians, through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, developed what he calls 'counter-tempos' - approaches to apprehending and navigating the 'homogenous, empty' time of Western modernity in profoundly subversive ways."
--Paul Sedra, author of From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

"On Time is a compelling argument about the institutionalization of modern temporality in Egypt, the subjectivities and attitudes it fostered, and the resistances it encountered. With a creative flourish, Barak renders time immanent in this book by tracking its transformation through the use of new technologies (clocks, telegraph, calendars, railways, trams, telephones) all of which in turn changed how Egyptians thought about themselves and related to each other. Through a keen playful analysis of culture, capitalism, and modernity, Barak reminds us how we are made and unmade in time."
--Saba Mahmood, author of Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject