Egypt: “The Yacoubian Building” by Alaa Al Aswany

The situation in Egypt is moving far too quickly for me to give you a solid investment recommendation. I doubt anyone could right now; this country is a gamble. Egypt has an educated population and a diversified economy, but the economy has not been growing and it does not have oil. This has greatly contributed to the unrest in the country.

The Yacoubian Building: A Novel is written by Alaa Al Aswany. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry, and the campus is proud of his success – even if it is not in the field that he studied at UIC! After graduating, he returned to Cairo to practice dentistry, taking up writing and political activism in his spare time. In the process, he became a best-selling Arabic-language novelist.

The book describes the life of people who live and work in the Yacoubian Building, an office building in Cairo where Al Aswany kept his dental office. It’s fiction; much of the book is about the complications that political corruption and Islamism create in everyday life. Whatever you want is here: hypocrisy, lust, love, hatred, and general human wretchedness. At least one character has a happy ending, though.

Al Aswany is willing to address sex and politics, and that made the book explosive in the Middle East. It also gives a good background on the frustrations facing the people, no matter where they fall on the social and political spectrum: Why can’t an accomplished gay man be accepted? Why do professed Muslims commit atrocities against other Muslims? Just exactly how much should you have to pay to win political office?

And will our heroine find love?

This is a great book. As for Egypt, keep following the news in The Economist.