One year ago, Egyptian Internet activist Wael Ghonim quickly became the face of the uprising. But he was never comfortable with the role and would still prefer to retreat into the crowd. The digital world is his comfort zone.

He has stuck his white headphones into his ears so that no one talks to him, he is looking at the ground so that no one recognizes him, and he is walking briskly so that no one stops him. But everyone in Egypt knows Wael Ghonim, and some call him the face of the revolution. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Time counts him among the 100 most influential people in the world.

But Ghonim doesn't like all the attention. It makes him feel uncomfortable, and he believes that it is bad for him. He starts walking faster. It's only a few blocks from his parents' apartment in Cairo's Muhandisin neighborhood to the offices of a P.R. company he has hired to keep the press at bay.

It is the period surrounding the anniversary of the revolution that began on Jan. 25, 2011, the day Ghonim had spent so much time and effort working to achieve, a day that ultimately led to the revolution. There is a strange tension in the air over Cairo. On the one hand, the first freely elected parliament met for the first time in this last week of January. On the other hand, it is dominated by Islamists. On the one hand, the military council lifted Egypt's emergency laws, in place since 1981, to mark the anniversary of the revolution. On the other hand, there are angry demonstrations against the military government almost every day. Ghonim has a lot on his plate -- and then he has written a book, which has just been published.

It's called "Revolution 2.0." In it, Ghonim describes how he came to the revolution, how he guided the protests through the Internet, and how agents working for then President Hosni Mubarak's state security service tracked him down, jailed, isolated and interrogated him. By the time he was released, the country was no longer the same. And then Ghonim found out that he was partly responsible for it.