Luxor Illustrated

Luxor Illustrated has now been published by The American University in Cairo Press. Though concentrating on Luxor, it also includes all major sites along the Nile from Abydos to Aswan and as far south as Abu Simbel on Lake Nasser. The title is the latest in the series of books written and photographed by Michael Haag, which includes Alexandria Illustrated and Cairo Illustrated.

eBook Templars USA

The Templars has now been published as an ebook by Harper Collins in the United States. It can be downloaded directly from the publishers or from other ebook providers; for example, it is available as a Kindle edition on Amazon.com.

City of Durrell, Forster and Cavafy

Rose de Menasce at the Sporting Club, 1914. She was a friend of Constantine Cavafy in the 1920s and of Lawrence Durrell in the 1940s. This photograph serves as the frontispiece of Vintage Alexandria.

'Vintage Alexandria offers a tantalising glimpse of the early decades of Egypt's twentieth century. A photographer as well as a historian, Haag demonstrates an eye for both the evocative and the documentary. ... Readers familiar with the work of Lawrence Durrell, Constantine Cavafy and E M Forster will appreciate this vision of a city "as brilliant, sophisticated and advanced as any in the Mediterranean"'.
                                           - The Times Literary Supplement

The Templars in British Paperback

The Templars: History and Myth is going into paperback in Britain early this summer. Profile Books, publishers of the hardback edition, will be publishing the paperback edition of The Templars on 2 July 2009. The hardback and paperback covers are identical except for the addition of a line from the Daily Telegraph review: 'A well-knit narrative through an enormous spread of history'.

Egypt

Cadogan Guides are publishing their fourth edition of Michael Haag's Egypt in August. The cover shows the Temple of Isis at Philae, a short distance up the Nile from Aswan. Worship of the goddess continued at this spot until AD 543 when the emperor Justinian closed the temple and removed her cult statues to Constantinople.

'An exceptional guide and highly recommended. He brings the sites to life, describing the art, architecture and history with lightly worn scholarship and wit. A guide of individual flair, it is written by someone who knows the country inside out and clearly loves it.'
- James Daunt of Daunt Books, London

Cairo Luxor and Aswan

Cadogan Guides are publishing the third edition of Michael Haag's Cairo Luxor and Aswan in October. The cover shows a relief at the Temple of Luxor.

American Edition of The Templars

Harper Collins, who are publishing The Templars: The History and the Myth in the United States this autumn, have now designed the cover for their edition. It retains elements of the British cover and adds some that are new. The title has been slightly altered: instead of 'History and Myth', the American edition reads 'the History and the Myth'. And instead of the medieval illumination at the bottom of the cover, the Harper Collins version uses a frame from Kingdom of Heaven showing the Templars in full charge. Harper Collins is putting the book straight into paperback with the publication date set for this autumn.

Eve Durrell

In its 1 January 2009 issue The London Review of Books ran this photograph of Eve Durrell, Lawrence Durrell's second wife and the model for Justine (click on the photograph to enlarge). The photograph is from Michael Haag's Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City 1860-1960 (see below).