Chicago: A Modern Arabic Novel
By Alaa Al Aswany
Translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab
The American University in Cairo Press $22.95, 272 pages

When Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany’s first novel The Yacoubian Building was published in 2002, overnight it became the bestselling novel in the Arab world. Set in a once grand but now decaying Cairo apartment building, the novel offered a startling insight into the corruption, torture, poverty and sexual harassment that confront ordinary Egyptians in their daily lives.