الكاتب... زَوِّجووووه!

ماعرف والله ايش كانت الفايدة هنا غير إني أتلقفت في حياة كم مصري كل ما يرجع من الدوام لازم لازم "يحتسي كأساً" من الشراب. ( )

translated from the Arabic ( )

"A medley of Egyptian and American lives collides on the campus of the
University of Illinois Medical School 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 an 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 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 'honor'; 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 an unflinching examination of contemporary
Egyptian lives." --jacket

This novel is about a group of people in and around the medical center at the University of Illinois, many of them, but not all, Egyptian - their troubles, their joys. In some ways, it suggests that as an immigrant you carry your country of origin with you and never quite escape it - whether you spend your live yearning to go back or trying to construct something completely other than where you are from. The individual stories lines are interesting, some even compelling, but nothing is very surprising. I successfully predicted some character trajectories within the first page or two and there was a gun introduced in Chapter 3 which I expect will go off any page now.

I can see why Aswany is popular in Egypt - he doesn't hold back with the political commentary and he is very forthright in his critique.

I did wonder if he had ever been to Chicago. It was strangely off about the city, as if he had used an out of date guide book. ( )

Really good novel, still little boring in the ending ... I totally recommend it ( )