Chicago: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ Alaa Al Aswany (Author)
Key Phrases: histology department, revered president, love team, Alaa Al Astivany, Alaa Al Aswany, Safwat Shakir (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Egyptian author al Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) weaves a vivid tapestry of clashing cultures in post-9/11 Chicago. Dr. Ra'fat Thabit, an Egyptian-American professor at the University of Illinois Medical School, has burrowed deep into American culture, but finds his identity threatened after his rebellious daughter falls under the sway of a shady boyfriend. Ra'fat's colleague, Dr. Muhammad Shamay, retreats from his American wife into extended reveries of his life in Cairo in the 1970s when he was young and in love with a revolutionary. His histology student, Nagi Abd al-Samad, really wants to be a poet. Nagi begins a relationship with an American girl named Wendy (who just so happens to be Jewish). Meanwhile, Shymaa Muhammadi, a medical student who wears a veil, finds her traditional values under siege when Tariq Haseeb, another Egyptian med student, begins seducing her with dogged persistence. The characters are beautifully realized—Ra'fat's family trouble is especially well done—and though their cumulative effect is muted, each of the story lines is individually compelling. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Aswany came to Chicago from Egypt in the late 1980s to attend the University of Illinois. A practicing dentist in Cairo, he became a best-selling novelist with The Yacoubian Building (2002), about the occupants of a Cairo apartment building. In his newest galvanizing novel, he creates another galaxy of lives, this time transforming the medical school at the University of Illinois into a seething microcosm of contentious politics, religious beliefs, and ambitions. Marshaling a magnetic cast of professors, Egyptian émigrés with American wives and children, and Egyptian students on visas and in culture shock, Aswany, using alternating points of view, uncoils a dramatic yet darkly hilarious plot involving imperiled marriages and covert political activity. Neatly smashing any notion of monolithic ethnicity and contrasting extreme ideology with determined morality, Aswany also expresses deep compassion for women, especially in the stories of  two lonely, pious students and that of a desperately job-seeking black woman married to a white professor. Brilliant and forthright in his insights into sexuality, racism, and tyranny; empathic in his psychological intensity; and righteous in his protest of covert post-9/11 brutality and injustice, Aswany has written a daring novel of our delusions and dreams, vulnerabilities and strengths. --Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper (October 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061452564
• ISBN-13: 978-0061452567
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #320,574 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good, July 28, 2008

By	Matthew Smith "Roger Mexico" (TN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You Can't Get Away from Your Heritage, August 5, 2008

By	George Webster, Ph.D., (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

A plus for this story is that the writing is smooth and flows nicely - much better than in most novels that I have read recently. A minus is that there is no plot. We have instead a peek at the lives of a group of medical people from Egypt at the University of Illinois Medical School in Chicago. They range from a professor who wants to adopt the lifestyle of America to a newly-arrived, female, graduate student in histology. The author presents their stories in brief looks at incidents in their lives, some important and some trivial. We read about one person for a page or two, and then move to another and another and another until we are back to the first character. This continues throughout the book. I had to pay close attention to keep track of each. The story has no climax. It simply stops. But the take-home lesson for me was the huge and pervasive influence that their homeland, their religion, and their culture had on all of the people in the story. It was as though a heavy chain tied them to their homeland and its culture, and they could not break it. Most tried to fit in, but America was simply alien to them. This hits you repeatedly throughout the book. If you are interested in this clash of cultures, this is the book for you.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trapped by a masterful novelist and human being, July 17, 2008

By	calmly - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

(What's this?)

Alaa Al Aswany is a staggeringly brave person. He is also, as I have learned by reading this book, a gifted novelist whose fiction brings us more closely than many of us might like to present day facts. The "About the Author" for this book indicates he lives in Cairo. If Eqypt is anything like the novel depicts (and as the interviewer of Aswany in the New York Times Magazine from April 27, 2008 appears to confirm) , you would wonder if he were even bold enough to live in the United States. Or anywhere without the best hiding place. Perhaps it may be that his celebrity provides him so safety but if you read this novel, you may, as I have, wonder - and fear for him.

Aswany attended the University of Illinois so he knows the university and the city. If Muslims have never been well understood in the United States and Islam not appreciated, certainly after 9/11 the misunderstandings and lack of appreciation for the many positive aspects of Islam and Muslims have only grown. Perhaps you were not even aware of the difficulties Christian Egyptians (Copts) face. Aswany shows all forcefully this in his characters. Even as fiction, it seems more real than my own hearing in the "real world" of how Muslims who had applied for U.S. citizenship had been experiencing lengthy delays. Unfortunately, much more sadly than delays in citizenship, I've read and heard more.

I have Muslim friends but we have not discussed the personal impact of 9/11 or of life in the U.S. I feel it is something now I should learn from them. It was careless of me not to have done so.

So is there too much sex in this novel? Would you like a romance novel? You can find those. Aswany at least does not shrink from the role sex plays in people's lives. I would by no means consider this porn. Of commercial advantage? Perhaps but how much truncation of experience do you want from a novelist?

Too much politics? But in these times when even for Anglo-Saxon U.S. citizens life in the U.S. seems scary, Aswany's political concerns about Egypt and the U.S. may make you wonder why you have not been concerned enough at least about the U.S. if you haven't been. Of course, there are other countries and their peoples, for example in the Middle East, for example Iraq, which we would do well do be more concerned about. There is a world of injustice, how to respond without being overwhelmed? Perhaps in some way you are. Even small ways seem better than to somehow do nothing at all.

It may be a surprise, given the powerful social concerns, just how strong "Chicago" is just as a story, with the lives of many characters interwoven. Easy to read but probably only due to Aswany's craft because the characters are well-developed, the settings well-described, and the subplots by no means simple. All this working together so that, despite at times feeling maybe the sex was overdone, maybe the political concerns seemed too explicit, toward the middle I was trapped and by the end stunned.

Cowardice has its cost; hopefully Aswany's courage has its rewards. In these frightening times, may we all find such courage. I do not know that I will but so much seems to depend on more and more of us doing so. "Chicago" is a compelling novel that will challenge you at your core. It is doing that for me and I will be faced with having to look back and wonder if I just wrote that for the sake of a better sounding review or if I mean it: in these times, in the U.S., in Egypt, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Aswany has trapped me with that question.