Chicago

(Paperback)

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Description

Sex, money and politics are the driving forces of society in this new novel from bestselling author Alaa al Aswany.
A medley of Egyptian and American lives collides on the campus of the University of Illinois Medical Center in a post-9/11 Chicago, and crises of identity abound. Among the players are an atheistic anti-establishment American professor of the sixties generation, whose relationship with a younger African-American woman becomes a moving target for intolerance; a veiled PhD candidate whose conviction in the code of her traditional upbringing is shaken by her exposure to American society; an emigre who has fervently embraced his new American identity, but who cannot escape his Egyptian roots when faced with the issue of his daughter's 'honour'; an Egyptian State Security informant who spouts religious doctrines while hankering after money and power; and a dissident student poet who comes to America with the sole aim of financing his literary aspirations, but whose experience in Chicago turns out to be more than he bargained for. This tightly plotted page-turner is set far from the downtown Cairo of al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building, but is no less unflinching an examination of contemporary Egyptian lives.

Reviews

Turned his yarn-spinning gifts to a story of Egyptian medics and students in the Windy City. Boyd Tonkin, Independent (Book of the Year)

The only Arabic-language novel to have created greater buzz and sell more copies since The Yacoubian Building is Al Aswanys second novel, Chicagoa rare opportunity to consider the contemporary Egyptian condition. Financial Times

Al Aswany's rich tableaux of everyday lives and devastating social commentary have made him a wildly popular novelist in his native Egypt and the bestselling Arab writer both in the Middle East and abroadChicago is a powerful indictment of dictatorship and its corrosive effect on human dignity. Time

Aswanys novel achieves something surprising, which is to turn great American city into a little Egypt. Aswanys rolling cast of characters and panoramic vision tells us that he wants to investigate the human condition on the largest scale and as in soap operas, he wants to make the spectator feel like part of the family. His book resides firmly within the mainstream of Egyptian fiction, but it is also an unusual and striking post-9/11 American novel. Chandrahas Choudhury, Scotsman

His skill in storytelling means that you enjoy reading about even the most unpleasant of the characters and one of the later chapters has such a bloodpumping climax, it should have had a publishers warning. This is politically charged writing that remembers the essential humanity of its characters. Tania Ahsan, Metro

A wonderful storyteller and a cynically astute observer of human folly and frailty. Francis King, Spectator

A natural storyteller, the episodic structure lending itself to a series of cliffhangers worthy of soap opera. A powerful political pageturner. Amber Pearson, Daily Mail

Author Bio

By Alaa al Aswany