I had to write something about one of my favourite books of last year before I completely forgot about it. It’s already disappearing into the haze. Published in 2002, The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany, printed in paperback (a gaudy purple cover) caught my eye. 
The real Yacoubian building in Cairo. I read plenty of foreign novels and for me it’s hard to remember all the names of the characters when so many names are repeated as second or third names of other characters. So I was grateful for the easymode of this novel – a small section at the beginning which spelt out a dozen or so main characters roles and relationship to each other. And what a bunch of believable people within. The delightfully hedonistic aged man who sought lustful pleasures with younger women against the wishes of his bitter phlegmatic sister. The disenchanted hardworking man of low caste (the son of a doorman!) who becomes an Islamic extremist; the corrupt, scheming businesman who buys a second wife and bids her to a secret existance; a distressed homosexual newspaper editor. This book has it all. Set around 1990, the writer makes regular comment on the changes/decline in Egyptian society over the past half century and uses the real life Yacoubian Building and it’s fall from prestige as a barometer for this. Corruption is everywhere and anything is willing to be overlooked – homosexuality anyone? if the price is right. Apparently the book broke new ground in this area for Arabic fiction. I didn’t realise that Cairo had been so influenced by the French and that it used to be a great deal more Western and secular than it is today. They made a movie of it in 2006. And a TV series. 4.5 stars.