Word: egypts
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Despite its seemingly incongruous title, Alaa Al Aswany's novel Chicago is filled with characters who reflect the conflicting political and social currents churning through Egypt today. There is Nagi, an idealistic medical student who is passionate for democratic change - and for his blonde American girlfriend. In league with him is Dr. Muhammad Salah, a university professor questioning the meaning of his life and nostalgic for a simpler past. Almost another world away is Shaymaa, a sweet, veiled young woman from the Nile Delta who finds herself struggling to cope with modern life in the big city...
Hovering over all of them is the despicable state security officer, Safwat Shakir, who is only too eager to ruin the lives of government critics for a pat on the back. Egypt's ruler - unnamed, but clearly drawn to resemble President Hosni Mubarak - makes a brief, pivotal appearance, too. In one scene, an aide scolds a photographer for asking the President to move "a little to the right" for a better picture, telling him: "The whole of Egypt would move while our revered President remains standing where...
...Aswany's rich tableaux of everyday lives and devastating social commentary have made him a wildly popular novelist in his native Egypt and the best-selling Arab writer both in the Middle East and abroad. A tale about the lives of various Egyptians living in Chicago, the book is already in its 12th Arabic print run, having sold 100,000 copies since its publication a year ago. Post 9/11, readers outside the Middle East are more interested than ever in understanding Arab societies, and many of them are becoming devotees of Al Aswany's writing. Last fall, a translation...
After the huge success in 2002 of his first novel, The Yacoubian Building - another scathing examination of Egypt's malaise - Al Aswany is already drawing comparisons to the nation's Nobel literature laureate, Naguib Mahfouz. Such high praise may be a little premature: Mahfouz founded modern Arabic literature and wrote almost 50 novels over half a century. But Al Aswany - who continues to work on the side as a dentist in Cairo - does share the legendary author's talent for constructing simple stories about Egyptian life that convey universal truths in defense of human dignity. His writing tackles the most...
...Count on it, Israel will do something to change the status quo in Gaza. One option is to build a bigger and higher wall around the country. Construction on a wall separating Israel and Egypt has already started. But little good it will do against the Hamas rockets Israel thinks are coming into Egypt...