Chicago: A Novel

From Alaa Al Aswany, the author of the highly-acclaimed The Yacoubian Building, comes a story of love, sex, friendship, hatred, and ambition set in the midwestern city with a cast of American and Arab characters achingly human in their desires and needs. Chicago offers an illuminating portrait of America—a complex, often contradictory land in which triumph and failure, opportunity and oppression, licentiousness and tender love, small dramas and big dreams, coexist. |

The author of the highly acclaimed The Yacoubian Building returns with a story of love, sex, friendship, hatred, and ambition set in Chicago, with a cast of American and Arab characters achingly human in their desires and needs.

Egyptian and American lives collide on a college campus in post-9/11 Chicago, and crises of identity abound in this extraordinary and eagerly anticipated new novel from Alaa Al Aswany. Among the players are a sixties-style anti-establishment professor whose relationship with a younger African-American woman becomes a moving target for intolerance; a veiled PhD candidate whose belief in the principles of her traditional upbringing is shaken by her exposure to American society; an émigré whose fervent desire to embrace his American identity is tested when he is faced with the issue of his daughter's "honor"; an Egyptian informant who spouts religious doctrines while hankering after money and power; and a dissident student poet who comes to America to finance his literary aspirations but whose experience in Chicago turns out to be more than he bargained for.

Populated by a cast of intriguing, true-to-life characters, Chicago offers an illuminating portrait of America—a complex, often contradictory land in which triumph and failure, opportunity and oppression, licentiousness and tender love, small dramas and big dreams, coexist. Beautifully rendered, Chicago is a powerfully engrossing novel of culture and individuality from one of the most original voices in contemporary world literature.

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“Al Aswany’s rich tableaux of everyday lives and devastating social commentary have made him a wildly popular novelist in his native Egypt and the best-selling Arab writer both in the Middle East and abroad. . . Aswany does share the legendary author [Mahfouz]’s talent for constructing simple stories about Egyptian life that convey universal truths in defense of human dignity.” - Time magazine (international edition)

“Egyptian author Al Aswany weaves a vivid tapestry of clashing cultures in post 9/11 Chicago. . . . The characters are beautifully realized [and] each of the story lines is individually compelling.” - Publishers Weekly

“...Al Aswany’s knack for making the personal political.” - New York magazine

“While the book explores political points, it’s ultimately a pluralist drama, complete with cliffhangers.” - Washington Post Express

“Aswany sensitively probes the nature of courage and patriotism. . . . [T]he story moves in surprising directions, and the ambiguity of life is well reflected in an unabashedly untidy conclusion. - The New Yorker

“Intricately laced. . . . A multifold, piercing, and at times disturbing peek behind the veil of discretion and between the lines of dogma. . . . In CHICAGO, it is modern Egypt that comes into fuller view from characters pondering their culture from a great distance.” - Seattle Times

“A fascinating window into a world closed to many Americans.” - Santa Fe New Mexican

“There’s a forceful energy to his characters. . . . Al Aswany proves himself to be a magnificent cultivator of their tales.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune

“[The characters] engage a reader’s sympathies and should expand an American reader’s perspective.” - Boston Sunday Globe

“Al Aswany is hardly a subtle writer, but there’s a forceful energy to his characters, whom he hammers into shape with short, blunt chapters. . . . The friction between freedom and tradition makes Al Aswany’s cast unpredictable in their actions. Tied still to another world, with only each other as reliable sounding boards, they each live in their own private Chicago—a city made up less from the skyscrapers and tourist sites the city advertises to the world than the affairs and sorrows that bloom in their shadows. Here, once again, Alaa Al Aswany proves himseld to be a magnificent cultivator of their tales.” - Newark Star Ledger

“In his second novel, the author offers an insightful, often amusing portrait of the Egyptian experience in post-9/11 America. American readers will find it a fascinating (and sometimes humourous) window into how Egyptians think and act among themselves. . . . In Chicago, Al Aswany sharoly crticizes the Egyptian establishment, teling the world that the day of change is approaching and that oppressive Arab regimes cannot stay in power much longer. For this alone, Chicago is a necessary book, bringing to light government injustice tha tmany thousands of Western tourists and businesspeople never see.” - Los Angeles Times

“Al Aswany writes about his Egyptian characters with charm, gentle humor, and genuine conviction.” - New York Times Book Review