Book review: Chicago

Published on Saturday 30 August 2008 14:32

CHICAGO Alaa Al Aswany Fourth Estate, £14.99

SET in Cairo, Alaa Al Aswany's debut novel The Yacoubian Building, depicting modern Egyptian society, came to the eyes of western readers with the shock both of recognition and surprise. It depicted a city peopled with bright, familiar characters. Yet it surprised with its frank exposure of corruption, decadence, prejudice and greed.

Now shifting his focus to America, Al Aswany features his countrymen and women living as emigres, seeking betterment in a nation which some have embraced as their promised land, and which others despise.

We are shown America and Americans, together with modern Egypt and modern Egyptians, through the perceptive gaze of an author who bares his characters' lives and loves with exceptional subtlety, making clear how physical passion is often at odds with traditional values and Muslim teaching, and how the politics of America and Egypt may muddy together for good or ill.

The campus of Illinois Medical Center, in a post-9/11 Chicago, provides the setting. Here a cohort of mature Egyptian students, along with department of histology professors (some also Egyptian), mingle academic pursuits with their political agendas.

Ahmad Danana, president of the Egyptian Student Union in America, is the villain of the piece. Leeching money from his father-in-law, he bullies his fellow students, abuses his wife and curries favour with his government's secret agents in America.

Nagi al-Samad is Danana's bte noire, a student dissident who plots a public demonstration to humiliate Egypt's president during his forthcoming formal visit to Chicago.

Then Nagi meets Wendy, playing Romeo (he being Arab) to her Juliet (a Jew). And Professor Graham, an erstwhile 1960s free spirit, hooks up with Carol; young, gifted, black and suffering racial discrimination, or so she believes. Their tale is tragic.

Al Aswany takes no shortcuts in establishing the moral fundamentals of all their lives. The one disappointment is that at times polemic prevails, and human drama becomes submerged in what is otherwise a joyously gripping read.