The Yacoubian Building: The International Bestseller - A Political Novel of Love and Loss in Modern Egypt

This is Egypt. Its past of glorified and often lamented early 20th-Century grandeur as well as its present of turbulence and increasing desperation and repressiveness are artfully laid out for the reader to analyze, contemplate and invariably pity in this impressive literary work. This is Egypt that everyone knows well but rather not talk about. The book captures the collective moral and physical destitution of the post-1970s Egyptian society like no other book has; at least none that I have ever read. The countrywide air of angst and despair is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The characters are drawn so skillfully and so realistically their pain is so intense and palpable it makes you wonder why it took so long for a revolution to erupt. Speaking of characters, this book is rife with a diverse set of characters that are rich with complexity and alive with nuance. The author did an extraordinary job in taking the reader on an unforgettable journey through both the most inexplicable and most banal in Egyptian mores. Each character represents a distinct reflection of Egypt herself. Her defiance, innocence, bitterness, lightheartedness, fanaticism, tolerance, softness, austerity, corruption, venality, hypocrisy, cowardice and hope. Allegory definitely weighs heavily in this work of fiction. Zaki Bey el Dessouki is an aristocrat and a francophile now living a shadow of his pre-1952-revolution posh life. He drowns his disillusion with reality in the pleasures of the…

The Yacoubian Building provides a glimpse into the complicated lives of residents of an Egyptian building. Set in the late 20th century Egypt, after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the Yacoubian Building started filling up with people from Egypt's lower class, while some others from the upper and middle classes stayed put. This has given Al Aswany the opportunity to develop many interesting characters. There is a son of the doorman who struggles to make a career as a policeman, even after being good at his studies and what he does after that. His beautiful young girlfriend, who performs sexual favors for little money. A rich homosexual man, whose boyfriend moves into the building with his wife and kid. A religious old man with dreams of being a politician. His second wife, a divorced lady from a porer region of Egypt. A pre-Revolution single rich man whose life has declined dramatically after the Revolution. His girlfriends. His servant and his brother, a tailor by profession, who moves into the building. The lives of these characters overlap and interact with each other; but otherwise, this book "feels" like a collection of short stories. Please note that they are not separate stories though. Al Aswany's characters are well-developed and thought out in detail. The characters go through a change in their lives over the course of several events. The reasons compelling these changes are beautifully pointed out by the author: poverty, sexual desparation, corruption, failure…