|
|
|
|
Chicago: A Modern Arabic Novel
Alaa Al-Aswany Price: LE 75
This title is currently unavailable |
|
ShareThis
|
Book Summary |
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 Ph.D. candidate whose conviction in the code of her traditional upbringing is shaken by her exposure to American society; an émigré who has fervently embraced his new American identity, but who cannot escape his Egyptian roots when faced with the issue of his daughterâs âhonorâ; 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.
In this tightly plotted page-turner, details of intimate pleasures and pains are injected with snippets of human history, ranging from the plight of Native Americans to the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Muslims in medieval Spain. The interplay of private and public sheds light on key global issues of our day, particularly racial and religious tensions in an increasingly paranoid world. Chicago is set far from the downtown Cairo of Al Aswanyâs The Yacoubian Building, but is no less unflinching an examination of contemporary Egyptian lives.
|
Average customer rating on Amazon: To read reviews go to Amazon.
|
Book
Details |
Language: English Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press (2008) ISBN-10: 9774163796 ISBN-13: 9789774163791
Genre: Arabic Literature Shipping Weight: 789 grams Condition: New
|
|
|