Man Of The Year: Reflections from Cell 54

The power of inward success and the politics of freedom

Anwar Sadat was born in a Nile Delta village and born again, as it were, in a prison cell. In his speeches and writings he has often contrasted the disorder of cities with the virtuous simplicity of life in hamlets, like his home village of Mil Abu el Kom. Curiously, Sadat has also described as "the happiest period of my life" eight of the 18 months in 1947-48 that he spent in Cell 54 of Qurah Maydan, awaiting trial for complicity in the political assassination of Amin Osman Pasha,...

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