"Chicago": A Modern Arabic Novel

I spent a wonderful evening in Cairo this week at the launch of the English translation of Chicago, Alaa Al Aswany's latest novel. Many blog readers will no doubt know that Al Aswany is the Egyptian author of The Yacoubian Building, published in 2002, one of the best selling Arabic novels of all time.

Alaa Al Aswany discussing Chicago at American University in Cairo

Like his earlier work, Chicago is the story of a set of Egyptians struggling with their lives. Rather than the inhabitants of a decrepit downtown Cairo apartment house, this time the characters are affiliated in one way or another with the University of Illinois where Al Aswany himself studied dentistry in the mid-'80s. Al Aswany thus not only gives us a relatively uncommon novelistic treatment of the lives of Arab expatriates in the West, but he provides a rare --and largely sympathetic-- Arab-drawn fictional portrait of a country that has aroused deep resentments in the Middle East especially since 9/11.

With a plot that is discouraging yet offers hope, and characters that are so human in their contradictions, flaws and weaknesses, Al Aswany again succeeds in crafting the kind of universal tale that brought The Yacoubian Building such literary acclaim. Chicago, also, dwells on social decay and the state's role in it, which led one of the guests at the book launch to remark that like The Yacoubian Building it can be read as a pessimistic story. Yet Al Aswany was eager to explain that while that may be true, his aim in writing his novels is to convey the message of tolerance, understanding and forgiveness, and to "maintain our ability to dream." That he succeeds in doing that is a sign of hope itself.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo