Customer Reviews

The Yacoubian Building

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Bad news first:
I found this book a little difficult to get into for a couple of reasons. One, I am not at all familiar with landscape of Egypt. Second, although I am marrying an Egyptian, and have somewhat of a familiarity for Arabic names, it was still a bit confusing to keep track of each of the characters -- especially with most of them having a nickname or title attached to their name in various parts of the story. I found myself having to back track during the first 30 or so pages to keep each character straight, which was a bit frustrating for a seasoned reader with a supposedly high comprehension level. I know, I know: what should I expect from a book translated from Arabic, about Arabic people, and taking place in an Arabic world? Still, I thought that it merited a warning...

Good news:
This was still an absolutely gripping novel. For those like me who may struggle with the names or places and get a bit frustrated in the initial pages, the story is well worth it. I was soon immersed in the lives of the characters, and began to care for them as if I knew them personally. I was able to relate it to what I know of Egyptian culture, and it opened my eyes to aspects of the culture which I have not personally seen.

In the larger scope of things, it really makes you think about the political/religious/ethnic and just general social issues that surround us. It allows one to think outside of the box and experience a life or lives that you ordinarily would not be able to. Although very sad in parts, it also contained great happiness, and allows you to truly see a beautiful culture at its best, at its worst, at its most twisted, and at its most innocent. A very honest, and very enthusiastic 5 stars.

This is one of those books that comes along once in a great while and has the power to take over one's life for the week or so it takes to read through the book completely. The characters are likeable and relatable, the plot both surprising and inevitable, and the writing is poetic and foreign in a beautiful and intriguing way. Recommended.

Alaa Al Aswany is a social realist writer of Egypt with a style and a methodology not unlike that of Naguib Mahfouz. The difference is, however, that he portraying Egypt in the long term aftermath of the Free Officers' coup de etat, the Arab nationalism of Gamal Abd al-Nasir and its social reforms, and years of corrupt emergency rule. All in a country where the relevance of the Arab nationalism of the 1950's and 1960's is in the past, and largely irrelevant to the real life lives of the Egyptian people.
The title, and the building which is the foci of the novel, is a name and a building with non-Egyptian/Arabic name and an origin in a more cosmopolitan and liberal Egypt of the past. The characters represent various sorts of Egyptian personality types in the downtown area: a rich homosexual, a potential aristocrat of the old pre-Nasir regime lapsed into decadence and stagnancy after falling from relevancy in the new regime, a rich "self made" owner of a chain of stores, one of which is in the ground floor of the Yacoubian Building, and on the roof, representatives of the new and also very poor Egypt: a young woman whose father has died and thus is forced to take a job which includes paid sexual harrassement to support her family, the son of the doorman who is dilligent in his studies and preparations to become a police officer, a servant in the building who is renting a shack on the roof of the building so he can set up a shirt-making store, and others.
What all these characters have in common is that each character makes some sort of dramatic leap from the status quo character portrayed the begining of the novel to some fate, either more promising or resulting in the character's fall from some sort of interim grace. It seems to me that Al Aswany believes that the 50 years of dictatorial rule in Egypt and the 10 years of emergency rule (the novel takes place in 1990) under Mubarak, caused all of the segments of the Egyptian society to become corrupt and decadent. By showing various sorts of Egyptians of various socioeconomic classes, regional origins, and religions, he attempts to illustrate how the country's dictatorial regime has forced and continues to force every slice of the society into corruption, stagnancy, decline and/or decadence.
When the book opens its milleau to us, it is assumed that this dictatorial/decadent/stagnancy state-of-beirng, and mind, has gone on for a long time, for as long as any one can relevantly remember.
Each character represents a different philosophical response to this state-of-stagnancy and an eventual attempt to deal with it. Either to overcome it through love and real interpersonal engagement, or to continue on the same road of decadence and stagnancy, which ultimately leads to the death of the character which is an allegory for Egypt and Egyptian society, honest hard work and dilligence which is thwarted by the corruption and class system of the regime leading that character to first an abstract idealism, and that idealism to his death, another character thinks he can outmanuever the true powers-that-be in the regime, only to discover that he is just as powerless and leverageless against the regime as any of the other less powerful, less influential, or less wealthy characters.
I liked this book but would have trouble understanding it if I had never been to Egypt and was not familiar with either Cairo, the history of Egypt and the evolving urban landscape of Cairo, and Egyptian society. Although the book has literary merit, its primary interest would either to Egyptians and other Arabs, who could "fill in the blanks" not discussed in the novel itself, or people interested in Egypt and its own cultural responses to its current condition. Also, the literary merit of the book is only relevant from the point of view of someone either part of or interested in Arab culture, Egyptian society, and the current state of things in the Arab world. That is why I gave it four starts.

For those interested in world events or the Middle East, I would recommend this book. It is a quick, enjoyable and often provocative read.

Clearly, parts of the book that deal with sexuality and physical intimacy are designed to shock and provoke readers. These topics and the way they are handled, however, are far less provocative to Western readers who generally live in more liberal societies. That being the case, it was very interesting to see the germination of a jihadist, as well as the inter-play of colonialism, fundamentalism and authoritarianism in modern Cairo. Mr. Aswany is a talented story-teller and social oberserver. I also liked the ending, which demonstrated real optimism and the belief in finding truth and happiness despite troublesome surroundings.

The Yacoubian Building: A Novel provides the Western reader with an unfamiliar view of Arab culture. The characters of the story are artfully woven into a cohesive fabric with the aging Yacoubian Building in Cairo's old district forming the pillar around which their lives are wrapped. The metamorphesis of the young working class college student into A fundamentalist radical is a lucid revelation of how people can be changed incrementally from ordinary to extreme. A worthwhile read.

This is a great book. An exciting read. My wife and I fought for our single copy. We ended up by reading it to one another.

I found the language beautiful. (Of course, I realize that this is the work of the translator. I have not read the book in Arabic.) Scenes and characters on the pages are just like many of the people we see on the streets and some we know in Cairo.

It's also full of insights into Egypt's modern political history and culture. I recommend anyone traveling to Cairo, especially those coming to work here, to read this book ahead of time. Along with Naguib Mahfouz's Respected Sir.

My wife and I give The Yacoubian Building a very high five-star rating.

John and Mary Lyn Villaume
Cairo

The first thought that occurs to a reader of "The Yacoubian Building," particularly if the reader is Egyptian, is this: how did it get past the censors? The book is packed with unedifying sex scenes, but these are a red herring, since the real taboo it breaks is political. The reader finds herself fast-forwarding through page after page of detailed if joyless sexual liasons to zero in on the far more titillating- in the Egyptian context- passages of socio-political criticism.
The novel takes the Yacoubian Building in Cairo as a metaphor for Egyptian society, with the rich and powerful occupying the apartments that were once owned by Europeans and aristocrats, and the poor and disenfranchised eking out a hardscrabble existence in the servants' rooms on the roof.
The characters all represent recognizable types reduced to their essence. There is the kind, courtly, patriotic Zaki Bey- a relic of the ancien regime who could almost be a character out of "The Cairo House"- who is riddled with vices: drinking, womanizing, and spouting French at the drop of a hat. There is the fat cat nouveau riche: ruthless, corrupt and politically connected. There are hungry and ambitious young people, the doorman's son and the housecleaner's daughter, who live on the rooftop. The message is that in a corrupt, dead-end society, relationships are inexorably exploitative, and the young and poor have no recourse but to prostitute themselves- literally or metaphorically- to the powerful and rich.
The one pure, uncompromising character turns to Islamic fundamentalism and becomes a terrorist. His "mission" - to assassinate a chief of police- is depicted in black and white terms: he is sure that his target is the man who was in charge of torturing him in jail, and there are no innocent bystanders hurt in this street-side machine-gun execution. Both propositions stretch the limits of credibility. A reader would look in vain here for the moral complexities of Ariel Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden."
The Yacoubian Building is not a subtle work; but it is clever, powerful, and gripping.

I'm in the middle of reading this, and love it. The central Cairo setting, the huge cast of characters, the heady doses of sex and politics - anybody interested in the Arab world ought to read this book.

Political folks will be interested in the description of local elections, full of vote buying and corruption. Aswany spares no one!

Warning: sexual matters are portrayed graphically. Aswany's view of homosexual relationships is sure to offend all kinds of people. He seems unable to resist some introductory editorializing, although his further descriptions seem taken from real life observation and reflect a true writer's eye for what happens among human beings. A sexual relationship that happens between a child and a man could get the book banned in lots of places. It's very matter of fact, and this reader doesn't find it prurient or despicable - just real. Lawrence Durrell touched on similar matters, and with less specificity or understanding.

There's also plenty of heterosexual sex to keep everybody entertained.

I have a quibble that may be with the translation. The prose changes tense way too often, sometimes within the paragraph. Since I don't read Arabic fluently enough to judge, I can't tell if this is the author's style or the translator's choice.

As a fiction writer, I would have chosen to make the tense consistent (preferably past tense). As it stands, the text is quite readable, it just has a stylistic quirk that jars the Western eye. Translators must make choices between reflecting the style of the original and hewing to literary conventions in the second language - there may have been considered reasons for this choice.

But these caveats are minor compared to the sweeping panorama of this wonderful book.

Look for the film now being shot in Arabic.

This book was published in Arabic in 2002 and for a few years thereafter was one of the world's best-selling novels in that language. It was translated into English in 2004. I didn't open it looking for a masterpiece of style or psychological depth, but for a window into another society's values, types, behaviors and problems. On that level, it satisfied.

It followed the lives of five main characters who lived or worked in a once-grand, now-decaying building in downtown Cairo: male/female, young/old, rich/poor, devout/secular, educated/working class, straight/gay. The author introduced the five as individuals, then paired them off with each other or with the secondary characters around them. The action jumped back and forth between the pairs as the novel progressed, contrasting the characters' behavior up through the conclusion.

With this structure, the author was able to touch on many aspects of society, one after another. He depicted political corruption, the scheming for advantage among the powerful and powerless, sexual repression and obsession, the benefits that flowed from money and connections, the lack of democracy and opportunity, the frustration that led to religious fundamentalism, and the search of so many for love and respect.

In interviews, the author has said he saw the majority of the characters in his novel as oppressed, and that he believed in the long run a repressive government would generate terrorism. In the book, one of the protagonists argued that the country's curse was dictatorship, that it led inevitably to poverty, corruption and failure in all fields, and that a step forward must include progress toward democracy.

I was struck particularly by the book's ending, where the main characters' various fates might hint at the author's view of the way toward a brighter future: joining the tolerant outlook of the old with the aspirations and vitality of the young, in a relationship of mutual trust and respect. And an avoidance of religious extremism and unbridled sensuality, both of which seemed to lead to wasted potential and a dead end.

The story was very readable, and the plot raced along. Toward the end, the pace was sustained at the cost of some believability. I found the characters' behavior credible or interesting enough a good deal of the time, except for the sudden anger and class scorn expressed by one of the characters that led to violence. Or the love that developed so quickly between a younger character and an older one.

Finally, I was left wondering how the author really felt about the religious beliefs of the sheikh who became the mentor of one of the young main characters. How evolution toward democracy would incorporate people like the sheikh is something I'm still trying to understand.

I looked for books on Egypt prior to my departure there. I picked a book on ancient Egypt by the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and the current volume as it had modern Egypt as its background. I discovered the book by chance in a local bookstore. So naturally I did not place high expectations on it. Nevertheless I was to find the book much more compelling than the particular Mahfouz.

The book tells stories of many characters. Though belonging to different strata of Egyptian society, they share the common fate of living in the Yacoubian building, located on Suleiman Basha Street (now called Talaat Harb Street) in downtown Cairo. Stories of the tenants share more than a common residence however. Except for the one at the very end, stories are invariably dark. They depict: corruption (Hagg Azzam, who wins a seat in parliament with bribe; Kamal, an influential political figure who sits at the receiving end of bribery; "the big man" -- Egypt's current president Hosni Mubarak?), unjustified suppression (towards a gay intellectual and editor in chief of a renown newspaper, Hatim), deceit (the brothers Abaskharon and Malik, who conspire to take over their master's property), indecency (Zaki Bey the warm-hearted womanizer), hypocrisy (Sheikh El Samman who advises Hagg Azzam's new wife to go through abortion), and anger (Taha, who transforms himself to a Islam extremist for the social injustice he encounters).

On a day during my stay in Egypt I hired a car and a driver. The driver Sameh was in his 40s, was highly educated, and had a good command of English. I brought up the book as a conversation topic to find him noticeably glad. He was surprised when I informed him that the book enjoyed a moderate success in the US, and that I regularly spotted English versions of the book (published by the American University in Cairo) even off the shelves of small tourist shops (apart from books on tourism, such shops typically carry only books by Mahfouz and Al Aswany). The Egyptian government had censored a good chunk of the movie that was based on the book, he informed me, thus he thought it made little sense that the government allowed the book to circulate so widely.

We chatted for long, in fact all day long, interrupted by infrequent stops. I had hired the car to visit the pyramids at Saqqara and Dashur, which were far more remote from Cairo than the famous trio in Giza. From our conversation I learned the many facets of corruption, and the frustration they evoke on the working people. Sameh worked as an operations manager for a renowned newspaper before. He singled out corruption as the reason behind the lack of jobs in Egypt, and hence the reason for him having to pick up driving as his occupation. His frustration was palpable. In the shadow of a pyramid I thought I could see why the novel came to be -- could the book not be a variant of investigative reporting, an attempt to capture social injustice, a crystallization of the prevalent frustration?

But to view the book solely to be a form of investigative journalism would amount to neglecting the author's insight into human psychology. I've been constantly reminded of the Franco-Czech author Milan Kundera's work while reading. In narrating the development of the characters' thoughts from motive to action, Al Aswany elicits the intensity and perceptiveness that is characteristic of Kundera. Due to having many characters in the book those narrations are shorter than Kundera's, but by no means less masterful.

I made a point in visiting 34 Talaat Harb Street on the evening before my flight home. Sitting on top of the bustling street, the building was less grandeur than I imagined it to be.