Alaa Al Aswany Books In Order

The Yacoubian Building

The Yacoubian Building holds all that Egypt was and has become over the 75 years since its namesake was built on one of downtown Cairo’s main boulevards. From the pious son of the building s doorkeeper and the raucous, impoverished squatters on its roof, via the tattered aristocrat and the gay intellectual in its apartments, to the ruthless businessman whose stores occupy its ground floor, each sharply etched character embodies a facet of modern Egypt where political corruption, ill gotten wealth, and religious hypocrisy are natural allies, where the arrogance and defensiveness of the powerful find expression in the exploitation of the weak, where youthful idealism can turn quickly to extremism, and where an older, less violent vision of society may yet prevail. Alaa Al Aswany s novel caused an unprecedented stir when it was first published in 2002 and has remained the world s best selling novel in the Arabic language since.

Chicago

The author of the highly acclaimed The Yacoubian Building returns with a story of love, sex, friendship, hatred, and ambition set in Chicago with a cast of American and Arab characters achingly human in their desires and needs.

Egyptian and American lives collide on a college campus in post 9/11 Chicago, and crises of identity abound in this extraordinary and eagerly anticipated new novel from Alaa al Aswany. Among the players are a sixties style antiestablishment professor whose relationship with a younger African American woman becomes a moving target for intolerance; a veiled PhD candidate whose conviction in the principles of her traditional upbringing is shaken by her exposure to American society; an migr whose fervent desire to embrace his American identity is tested when he is faced with the issue of his daughter’s ‘honor’; an Egyptian informant who spouts religious doctrines while hankering after money and power; and a dissident student poet who comes to America to finance his literary aspirations, but whose experience in Chicago turns out to be more than he bargained for.

Populated by a cast of intriguing, true to life characters, Chicago offers an illuminating portrait of America a complex, often contradictory land in which triumph and failure, opportunity and oppression, licentiousness and tender love, small dramas and big dreams coexist. Beautifully rendered, Chicago is a powerfully engrossing novel of culture and individuality from one of the most original voices in contemporary world literature.

Friendly Fire

Alaa Al Aswany has won resounding critical acclaim for his deft and moving portrayals of the lives of contemporary Egyptians who constantly examine their relationship with Egypt’s history, religion, class, and gender distinctions. In Friendly Fire he once again demonstrates an extraordinary empathy for lost and searching souls as he focuses on the exquisite emotions of everyday life.

In ‘The Kitchen Boy’ and ‘Dearest Sister Makarim,’ Al Aswany explores the hypocrisy of the class divide. The brief and tender ‘Izzat Amin Iskandar’ is a heartrending view of youthful hope. And in the unforgettable novella ‘The Isam Abd el Ati Papers,’ the narrator carries us along a troubling journey through his painful relationships with his artist father and his self centered mother, en route to a devastating collision of temptation and morality.

Here are stories of generational conflict, love, repression, and the clash of Western and Arab ideals, all beautifully rendered by a true modern master.

On the State of Egypt

The bestselling author of he Yacaoubian Building and hicago turns his attention to current affairs in Egypt. In the novels and short stories of Alaa Al Aswany, characters struggle with class differences, police brutality, poverty, sexual harassment, and political corruption; now, in a new collection of the weekly newspaper columns previously published in Arabic, Al Aswany considers these same issues that torment modern Egyptian society. He has a great deal to say about one of the most pressing questions on everyone’s mind: who will be the next president of Egypt, and how will he be elected? He discusses the moral ambiguity of appointed politicians, the suitability of democratic reforms in a Muslim society, and the inherent contradiction in the actions of the religiously observant policeman who tortures or the man who haras*ses women. Critical, controversial, and straightforward, Al Aswany asks his government to serve the people, and the people to demand what they deserve.