Booksellers & Stationers in Cairo

31 Mohamed Abdou Street, behind Al-Azhar Mosque, El-Darb El-Ahmar, Cairo 11675, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt

Family bookbinding shop opened 1936; third/fourth generation still hand-sews and gold-tools leather bindings by hand (Condé Nast Traveller Middle East; Middle East Eye).

Best for Hand-sewn, gold-tooled leather bindings from a family workshop opened in 1936.

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Zamalek

Opened in Zamalek in 2002 by sisters Hind and Nadia Wassef with Nihal Schawky, Diwan was Egypt's first modern bookstore and stocks Arabic, English, French and German titles alongside a café, stationery and Arabic music. Its branches carry curated fiction, children's books and Egyptology sections, and the founders published a memoir chronicling the shop's beginnings.

Best for Arabic and English books

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13 Road 206, Degla, Maadi, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt

Karam Youssef opened the Maadi bookshop-publisher in 2006; Ahram Online interviewed her at the Maadi shop on 5 Jul 2026 after 20 years; OkayAfrica (16 Jul 2025) confirms the still-operating cultural hub and Arabic-language press.

Best for Independent books and paper goods.

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1st floor, 36 Abd al-Khaliq Tharwat Street, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt

Lehnert and Landrock moved their photography business to Cairo in 1924; stepson Kurt Lambelet opened the first brick-and-mortar bookshop in 1936 (Middle East Eye 2021).

Best for Photography and books from a Cairo business established there in 1924.

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6 Talaat Harb Square, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt

Landmark Talaat Harb Square bookshop; Middle East Eye dates the family newspaper kiosk to 1951 and the landmark store to 1958; house published Sartre/Camus and later banned titles after 1967.

Best for Books and publishing from a Talaat Harb Square family shop dating to 1958.

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3 Talaat Harb Street, 1st floor, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt

Opened 2004 at 3 Talaat Harb; CUIP records it as the first bookstore in Egypt approved by France's Centre National du Livre as a Francophone reference bookstore.

Best for A Francophone reference bookstore on Talaat Harb, opened in 2004.

165 Mohamed Farid Street, intersection with Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt

Founded 1928 as a bilingual English-Arabic bookshop and publisher; still operating downtown in 2025 (Middle East Eye; 2025 visitor note).

Best for English- and Arabic-language books from a shop and publisher founded in 1928.

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