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Chicago (Paperback)
Alaa Al Aswany; Translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab
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R342
R275
Discovery Miles 2 750
Save R67 (20%)
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Sex, money and politics are the driving forces of society in this
new novel from bestselling author Alaa al Aswany. A medley of
Egyptian and American lives collides on the campus of the
University of Illinois Medical Center in a post-9/11 Chicago, and
crises of identity abound. Among the players are an atheistic
anti-establishment American professor of the sixties generation,
whose relationship with a younger African-American woman becomes a
moving target for intolerance; a veiled PhD candidate whose
conviction in the code of her traditional upbringing is shaken by
her exposure to American society; an emigre who has fervently
embraced his new American identity, but who cannot escape his
Egyptian roots when faced with the issue of his daughter's
'honour'; an Egyptian State Security informant who spouts religious
doctrines while hankering after money and power; and a dissident
student poet who comes to America with the sole aim of financing
his literary aspirations, but whose experience in Chicago turns out
to be more than he bargained for. This tightly plotted page-turner
is set far from the downtown Cairo of al Aswany's 'The Yacoubian
Building', but is no less unflinching an examination of
contemporary Egyptian lives.
A young man's dreams for a better future as a student in the
Teachers' Institute are shattered after he assaults one of his
instructors for discriminating against him. From then on, he begins
his descent into the underworld. Penniless, he seeks refuge in
Wikalat 'Atiya, a historic but now completely run-down caravanserai
that has become the home of the town's marginal and underprivileged
characters. This award-winning novel takes on epic dimensions as
the narrator escorts us on a journey to this underworld, portraying
as he sinks further into its intricate relationships the many
characters that inhabit it. Through a labyrinth of tales,
reminiscent of the popular Arab tradition of storytelling, we are
introduced to these denizens, whose lives oscillate between the
real and the fantastic, the contemporary and the timeless. And
while the narrator starts out as a spectator of these characters'
lives, he soon becomes an integral part of the lodging house's
community of rogues.
"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so
devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets.
Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here,
doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see
another day."The Egypt of the Mamluk dynasty witnessed a period of
artistic ostentation and social and political upheaval, at the
heart of which lay the unsolved question of the ruler's legitimacy.
Now, in 1516, the Mamluk reign is coming to an end with the advance
of the invading. Ottomans. The numerous narrators, among them a
Venetian traveler and several native Muslims, tell the story of the
rise to power of the ruthless, enigmatic, and puritanical governor
of Cairo, Zayni Barakat ibn Musa, whose control of the corrupt city
is effected only through a complicated network of spies and
informers.
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