Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato
Order: Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Indiepubs (discount code UCPSAVE30 for 30% off @ Indiepubs)
Upcoming events:
Friday 2/6/26: Book talk at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies & online, noon. Open to the public & free!
Thursday 2/26/26: Nile Nightshade in the high school classroom: a workshop for modern world history teachers. In-person (with iftar) & online. Hosted by Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Washington DC, 6:00-7:30 pm. Please reach out if you are an educator interested in participating!
To schedule an event or book talk: ann [dot] gaul [at] gmail [dot] com
About the book
By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt’s top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. Nile Nightshade tells the story of how this came to be.
Along the way, the tomato offers new stories about familiar things: how tomatoes moved through the Indian Ocean world as well as the Mediterranean; their prominence in both Italian cuisine and Ottoman cuisine (and how both converged in Egypt); that the now-common association of Egypt with the “Middle East” rather than the rest of Africa was neither inevitable nor incidental; how seemingly ephemeral practices like home cooking transform the “modern” into the “traditional” and consolidate—or even create—notions of difference that come to be understood as common sense.
“…it would be hard to find another writer who brings Ms. Gaul’s particular strengths to what could have been merely esoteric culinary-history trivialities. First of all: She thinks like a cook…Almost as important: She has a gift for shedding light on nuances of meaning in written or spoken Egyptian Arabic.”
“In Nile Nightshade, Anny Gaul offers a sweeping survey of the country’s devotion to Solanum lycopersicum that adds colour and depth to portrayals of the social and political whirlwind that have enveloped Egypt over the past 150 years.”
Reviews & coverage
On ‘Nile Nightshade’: Anny Gaul’s work brings new dimensions to discussing ‘national’ food history. From The Desk of Alicia Kennedy, January 23, 2026. (Recording of the Desk Book Club discussion available to newsletter subscribers; watch an excerpt here)
Tomato-crazy: A portrait of Egypt through one of its staple foods. The Times Literary Supplement, January 9, 2026.
Nile Nightshade on the New Books Network. Podcast interview with Miranda Melcher, December 3, 2025.
The Surprising History of Egypt’s ‘Crazy Tomatoes’: How an ordinary ingredient became a symbol of collective complaint. Foreign Policy, November 7, 2025.
‘Nile Nightshade’ Review: The Vine of the Valley. The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2025.
Food Historian and Assistant Professor of Arabic Anny Gaul Receives NEH Grant. University of Maryland College of Arts & Humanities, July 6, 2023.
“Nile Nightshade provides a master class in food history by deftly and accessibly navigating a complex political, culinary, and linguistic story through a now-common vegetable. By prioritizing the kitchen, Anny Gaul produces a new way of thinking about the building of national cuisines that traverses borders both imposed and imaginative.”
Cook (from) the book
Recipes from (or inspired by) Nile Nightshade and the cookbooks & culinary practices it discusses:
Weeka: Nile Valley Okra | Sweet Tomato Jam | Baladi Lentil Soup | Roasted Duck | Tasbikassoulet | Saʿidi-style Egyptian Roasted Duck | Koshari | Sharkasiyya
“Gaul’s amazingly documented, engagingly erudite, and insightful story of how Egyptians made the tomato their own is a fascinating way to learn about Egypt: its history, agriculture, culinary culture, and people.”
“I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It adds a fresh and original dimension to the study of modern Egypt.”
Read & explore more:
Researching Egyptian Food History. A resource guide to libraries, archives, and online repositories with sources relevant to Egypt’s culinary, nutritional, and agricultural histories
Anny’s Bite of Egypt: Beyond Stereotypes (Dot Lemon Films). A short film on how I approach food history & deconstructing tired stereotypes about Egyptian food
This Egyptian Grain Bowl is the Pantry Wonder-Dish We Need Right Now, in Eater. A recipe + preview of the history of koshari explored in Chapter 1 (though you’ll have to read the book for the latest version!)
Ask Abla Nazira: Nazira Nicola – The Doyenne of Modern Egyptian Cooking, in Rawi (also in Arabic). A profile of one of the cookbook authors at the heart of the book (her recipes are referenced in 4 of the 6 chapters)
Revolutionary Landscapes and Kitchens of Refusal: Tomato Sauce and Sovereignty in Egypt, in Gender & History. Parts of this article, revised & expanded, made their way into chapters 3 & 5
“Food Studies in the Arab World: An Interview with Anny Gaul,” in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 44 (2024). A wide-ranging interview with seven scholars across the humanities and social sciences, with lots of material that previews the book’s contents.