The attempt to put into words what is fundamentally a visual experience confronts this reviewer with an enormous challenge. Being neither artist nor art critic, I must approach the task through my lens as friend and long-time admirer of Gazbia Hassan Sirry, one of Egypt's leading modern artists, whose varied and innovative artistic career spans more than fifty years. Perhaps in this way I can create a context within which this book can be read, appreciated, and, I hope, used by those scholars who are interested in the dialectic between art and society, artist and social transformation.