Allaa As Aswany - The Yacoubian Building (Harper, 2007) ***

The Egyptian author, Allaa As Aswany, is an dentist by training, educated in Chicago where he lived for seventeen years, is possibly better known as a political commentator and founder of a political party. His articles have appeared in numerous international newspapers. 

In "The Yacoubian Building", he describes Egyptian society in a form of satire. All characters live in this building - that actually exists on 34, Talaat Harb Street in Cairo - and have completely different backgrounds and levels of wealth. There are servants, officers, an editor-in-chief of a French-speaking newspaper, a very wealthy business man, a lawyer, a poor young woman, a wealthy ageing playboy and his dominant sister, the son of the doorkeeper, a Christian shirtmaker, the corrupt secretary of the Patriotic Party. 

All the characters interact because they live or work in the same building (some in luxurious appartments, some on sheds on the roof). The characters are relatively 'flat' in the sense that they do not really evolve in the course of the novel, and many of them are of course caricatures of the groups they represent. 

The novel itself is not of high literary value in my humble opinion, but its real power lies in As Aswany's courage to address topics are that are rarely addressed in Egyptian or even Arabic literature: sexual abuse of women and homosexuality. He also tackles the hypocrisy of those with power and education, and his compassion for the people with limited perspectives on life are not new to Arabic literature, yet they reach a quite essential level in "The Yacoubian Building". 

In short, it's interesting but not great. I can applaud his courage to denounce social injustice. 

If you have not read anything by an Egyptian author, I can recommend to start with Naguib Mahfouz and Nawal El Sadawi.