Chicago

by Alaa Al Aswany

Book Overview

From Alaa Al Aswany, the author of the highly-acclaimed The Yacoubian Building, comes a story of love, sex, friendship, hatred, and ambition set in the midwestern city with a cast of American and Arab characters achingly human in their desires and needs. Chicago offers an illuminating portrait of America--a complex, often contradictory land in which triumph and failure, opportunity and oppression, licentiousness and tender love, small dramas and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061452580
• ISBN13: 9780061452581
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Provocative and poignant

This wonderfully-written book is a mishmash of cultural anxiety, fear, love, loss, academia, power, and even rage. It reminds me of Zadie Smith's On Beauty mixed with Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers, both of which are INCREDIBLE books, though Aslam's book is more of an eloquent insight into the overzealous Muslims in the form of an honor killing. While this book is not for everyone, it will be thoroughly enjoyed by most who love when authors really make them ponder issues they may not have given much consideration to AND feel even when they don't want to or thought they couldn't. As a Vine reviewer, I received an advance copy of this, but will show my support of the author and purchase this book because I enjoyed it that much. I am going to read his first book, The Yacoubian Building, as soon as I pare down my spectacular fall reading list! Recommended. Very recommended.

Powerful Look At Cross Racial Chicago School

This rich, beautifully written novel by Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany is an in depth look at race relations and friendships at a medical school in Chicago. The novel focuses on several different students and teachers and jumps back and forth to each one, making the book almost impossible to put down. The most interesting thing to me was the opinions the characters had for their country and for America. Some came to America and did everything they could to rid themselves of their Egyptian heritage. Others used the school for the education and couldn't wait to return home. One tried to create power over his fellow students and his wife to show his self imposed dominance over them. One was a quiet, shy girl who brought the best out of another character, who was more standoffish before he met her. The interactions between the staff and students are also interesting; a drunken political argument at one teacher's house was a great point in the story. The book weighs a lot of heavy questions about Egyption politics and their faith. This is a great look into several different points of views of people from the same country all living in their own brand of community in a country that is strange to them. Their goals are often the same, yet at the same time vastly different. The narrative style is very tight. The author is very knowledgable of his subject matter, and the translator did a great job maintaining the integrity of the sentence flow. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys quality literary fiction.

Very good

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

Trapped by a masterful novelist and human being

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

True Humanity

Aswany, Alaa Al. "Chicago", Harper, 2008. True Humanity Amos Lassen I have been looking forward to Alaa Aswany's new book "Chicago". I was greatly impressed by his "The Yacoubian Building" and wanted to read more by him. "Chicago" is a love story and it also includes the themes of friendship and sex, politics, hatred and ambition. But what strikes me the most about the book is the author's depiction of humanity. It is desires and needs that make us human and Aswany's characters are very real and very human. It was not an easy time for Arab-Americans after the September 11 terrorist attacks and I suspect that the place where tempers flared the most were college campuses. In "Chicago" Aswany shows us the collision of lives in the wake of the attacks and how many suffered from an identity crisis. Aswany gives us a look at Middle America by giving us a look at both culture and individuality and he presents his view in wonderful prose. I know this is a translation from the Arabic and the translator went the distance to make this novel real and readable. Aswany begins with a brief history of Chicago and then we meet our characters. There is an Egyptian informant who professes deep faith but seems to believe in money more than religion. An African-American woman is targeted for intolerance and there is a new American whose new identity is put to the test when he is brought to face the issue of his daughter's honor. We have a PhD candidate whose finds that her traditional upbringing meets problems when she is exposed to the values of America. Finally we have a poet who is not happy with the way the world is going but nevertheless comes to America so that his aspirations in literature will be financed and who later finds out that there is more to America than he suspected. Aswany weaves the lives of these characters together to give us a brilliant new novel that has the reader looking at his own life in America. I have always felt that the beauty and the purpose of literature were to provide food for thought and Aswany gives us not just food but an entire banquet.