Early on in The City Always Wins, the debut novel by British-Egyptian film-maker Omar Robert Hamilton, there’s a perfectly pitched sequence where a description of a revolutionary protest is entwined with the government’s simultaneous attempt to smooth it out of history.

At the Chaos office in Cairo, gas masks, food and juice are being organised for the injured, while the state-run television channel issues smooth denials that any significant violence has occurred. “And there is not an atom of truth to the malicious rumors of live ammunition,” the newsreader says. “Do not believe unverified rumours. Do not rely on foreign-owned media for your information?.?.?.?Beware of troublemakers. Beware of infiltrators.”

This week, some real-world news stories made me think about the unreliability of the official record — and what might happen when that version of the truth becomes a foundation of people’s memories.