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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good, July 28, 2008
This review is from: Chicago: A Novel (Hardcover)
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I must say I had the wrong impression of this book from reading the product description. I was afraid this book was going to be something a bit tawdry and maybe even a little harlequinesque because the description focused quite a bit on the sex aspects of this book. Instead the book was a powerful look at people from different backgrounds coming into contact with vastly different personalities sometimes making connections and other times crashing into one another altering their lives forever. The sex in the book was integral to the plot and was anything but tawdry or gratuitous. Sex is a central aspect of all our lives and the author uses sex as a vehicle to expose greater truths about ourselves in intimate detail.
One thing that amazes me (although it really shouldn't) is how much I relate to some of the Egyptian characters in this novel that come from conservative religious backgrounds. Coming from a conservative southern Baptist background myself I find myself surprised to be relating with characters from a different religion and different cultures. For me this is simply more evidence that we are not anywhere near as different as we sometimes imagine we are.
The plot centers on Chicago University Histology department, and the author uses different narrative techniques to tell his characters stories. His transitions between characters is very fluid, and his use of the first person narrative with one character gives the book a deeper intimacy than the it would have had written solely in the third person. The transitions are what really moves the book forward and gives it a dramatic feel. The author chooses highly dramatic moments for his paragraph breaks and character transitions which leaves the reader wanting more. I had a hard time putting the book down at times because I wanted to find out what happened to one character or another. I really love when an author is able to employ this technique effectively which this author has done.
The author does an excellent job juxtaposing the old guard with the next generation as it comes up in the same world they once came up in. The old Egyptian emigrants stand in stark contrast to the idealism and optimism of the younger generation coming to school under them. Each character seems to represent immigrant experience in different ways. You have the one character who disowns his Egyptian roots completely (or so he thinks) to become fully "Americanized" and cast off the "backwardness" of Egyptian society. Then there are those who feel they have betrayed their country and live guilt riddled lives. These characters tend to focus the reader in the almost completely cyclical nature of our lives as the young Egyptians idealism forces them down much the same paths of those who came before them.
I really hate when people discuss the ending of books, but I am going to finish by saying a little something about the end. I am going to be vague so as not to ruin anything, but if you are like me then I would stop reading now. The way the author was leading the book towards its conclusion I was afraid I was going to have to stomach a marshmallow, cushy ending that would have disappointed me greatly. Instead the author has a fabulous ending I really enjoyed, and that's all I will say.
I picked up this book because I was looking for some books by authors from this part of the world, and this book did not disappoint at all. It was a fun, dramatic and quick read. The characters were all engaging and forced you to care and read on. The translation was excellent, and now I have an author I am going to go back and read his earlier stuff and anything he writes in the future. I highly recommend this book.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't Travel Too Well, August 22, 2008
This review is from: Chicago: A Novel (Hardcover)
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This second novel by an acclaimed Egyptian journalist (and full-time dentist, apparently) is set in Chicago, Illinois. Which is, as most people reading this will know, a big city on the shores of Lake Michigan in North America. If you didn't know that, no problem. The author takes the first few pages of the book to give you a potted history of the city, complete with early genocides committed against the natives and the story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
That part is aimed, I guess, at readers in Cairo who might not have a strong notion of just where or what Chicago is. I mean, it doesn't seem to be presented in an ironic or particularly humorous way, or as a postmodern touch.
Thankfully the book moves on quickly to its main stories, a set of interlocking portraits of Egyptian students and emigres living in Chicago with their assorted spouses, lovers, and colleagues, some of whom are fellow emigres and some of whom are blonde or wear cowboy boots or whatever, and so are meant to represent native-born Americans. In superficial terms, then, this book resembles Zadie Smith's phenomenal "White Teeth," which deals with a group of Caribbean and South Asian emigres and native-born locals in a London suburb.
But Smith's novel is a masterpiece and already a classic, so it's probably not fair to make many comparisons with "Chicago," which often struggles just to get its stories told. Smith created memorable, quirky, individual characters and set them in motion to create a wholly unique series of events and experiences. Alaa Al Aswany has a journalist's instinct for sketching recognizable, culturally representative personalities, as long as they're Egyptian. So here we get the young radical (a misunderstood poet), the conniving president of a foreign students' union (who is also a religious hypocrite, a male chauvinist pig, and -- just in case you still missed the point -- a moocher with a secret bank account), a naturalized American who has deliberately rejected every shred of his Egyptian heritage and never fails to put down Egypt and all Egyptians in all his public conversations. And so on, including a young, observant Muslim woman, who has her values shaken by her encounter with American culture. Imagine that. There are others, but you can probably figure them out yourself if you've watched CNN for the last couple of years.
And these are the well-drawn characters. The problem is that there's virtually nothing surprising about any of them, so they come across more as types than as actual humans. Their predicaments are predictable, and so are their responses. By comparison, the "Americans" in the novel are stick figures. With their stock dialogue and limited responses, they seem to be there mostly to push the plots along. (I'm about halfway through the novel right now, so I'll report back when I'm finished, if anything actually changes about the whole character thing.)
Part of the disappointment of this novel doesn't reside with the author's work, however. It has apparently received the crudest, clumsiest translation I've ever encountered in a book first written in another language. At least I think that must be the problem. The prose seems wooden and childish at many points; surely the literate Egyptians who praised this novel and its predecessor didn't have to deal with the awkward locutions of the English here. (Or maybe they were so excited by the frank depictions of governmental corruption and the characters' sexy behavior that they overlooked its lack of purely literary merit?)
Some people will probably recognize themselves in the pages of "Chicago," especially if they squint. Everyone else can walk on by.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Poor translation, interesting themes, July 26, 2008
This review is from: Chicago: A Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Chicago is the first novel I've read by Alaa Al Aswany, Egypt's best-selling author, dentist and political activist. Chicago tells the tale of a number of Egyptian medical students studying in Chicago on an Egyptian government scholarship, several expatriates, and Americans. The themes are as vast as the great city: racism, prejudice, class, love, religion, politics.
Chicago's greatest strength is that it presents to the American reader a glimpse into a culture that is not only foreign to (most of) us, but on that has been distorted by the media. Aswany surprised me, particularly on two of the above themes: sex/love and politics. I never expected a novel geared towards a predominantly Muslim audience to be sexually promiscuous (with sharia consequences, of course), nor one that would so openly criticize Egypt's current despotic administration, the effects of which are displayed heavily in the novel, particularly with Nagi, an Egyptian student-poet who was once a political detainee, and General Shakir, a convincingly evil and sadistic part of the secret police machinery who takes pleasure in the human rights violations he commits. Another character of note is Shaymaa, a devout Muslim woman student who falls in love with fellow student Tafiq, and is faced with the needs of love and the conflicts in brings with her religious upbringing.
The problem with Chicago is the translation, especially during the first fifty or so pages of the novel. Much of it makes Chicago seem like amateur fiction, as if Aswany was writing a short story for a fiction workshop at some community center. The translation is clumsy and stiff, and at times I found myself wondering if I should bother finishing the book.
Ultimately, what won me over is Aswany's presentation of his own culture, particularly the way in which the predominance of Islam influences the choices the characters make, in addition to Aswany's strong and daring political views. Had the translation been better I might have given this 3.5 or 4 stars, however, once can't really escape the effects of a poor translation when considering the quality of fiction.
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