The Yacoubian Building - by Alaa-Al-Aswany

Over Dukkah in Darlinghurst, the BBC debated the merits of the Yacoubian Building, a neighbourhood novel set in downtown Cairo. Published in Egypt in 2002 as Imarat Yaqubyan, the novel has been a bestseller in Arabic and is now in its 9th edition.

The Guardian (2007) gives us a review and background of the book. The Yacoubian Building unfolds in the former European quarter downtown at the time of the 1990 Gulf war. The Yacoubian building itself is a once-handsome art deco block on the boulevard known now as Talaat Harb, but here called by its old name of Suleiman Basha Street. Built in 1934 for an Armenian millionaire, its fall from grace is for this author just one aspect of Egypt's general dilapidation. The pashas, cotton millionaires and foreigners who occupied the apartments were all chased out at the coup d'état of 1952 and replaced by military officers and their country wives.

With the opening of the country to foreign capital in the 1970s, the downtown district became outmoded, and apartments in the building were let out as offices (including the clinic where Alaa al Aswany first practised as a dentist). Whether in fact, or merely in fiction, old store-rooms on the roof of the building are rented in the novel to poor immigrants from the villages, so that Aswany manages to have both a middle-class apartment block and a teeming Mahfouzian alley in the air.

The characters are a sort of compendium. There is Zaki Bey, an elderly roué with his pre-revolutionary manners and liking for dope and women; Hatim Rashid, a newspaper editor who pursues rough young men from the sticks; and Hagg Muhammad Azzam, a self-made millionaire with a shady past and political ambitions. On the roof, the shirtmaker Malak is working out a deep-laid plan to capture an apartment downstairs.

The heterosexual romantic interest is supplied by Taha, the bright and pious doorman's son, and his girlfriend Buhayna. When Taha proves too honest for the Police Academy, he drifts towards Muslim militancy and away from Buhayna, who is meanwhile finding that there are ways of making money out of men without ruining herself for the marriage market.

If the characters, good and bad, educated or not, have a quality in common, it is a sort of big-city sophistication. The plotting is neat, the episodes are funny and sad, and there are deaths and weddings aplenty. For all the Mahfouzian decor - prostitution, hashish, homosexuality - there is none of the oddity, even clownishness, of character or the intensity of savour and texture of Midaq Alley. Aswany's is an altogether more worldly Egypt, and one that is in a hurry to get somewhere or other.

For all its risqué material, and its parade of sodomy and scripture, The Yacoubian Building is restrained in its portrayal of the actual relations of power and wealth in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt.

Kevin thought the book was a page turner, akin to Tales of the City. The best book this year by far.Mark loved the postulations of power and greed and thought the pace was excellent.Leanne found the oppression of women a dominant theme, but found the characters strong, despite a somewhat colonised voice arising from the translation from arabic to english.And Andrew wondered if the book created controversy in the muslim world with its strong characterisation.

Overall the BBC loved the book almost as much as Mark's magnificent hospitality.

Scores:

Mark: 81/2

Kevin 8 ½

Leanne 7 ½

Overall Score: 8

... and a big thanks to Alena, for her scribing!