Chicago: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Aswany A Al (Author)

3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Harper (Sep 29 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061452564
ISBN-13: 978-0061452567
Product Dimensions: 23 x 16.2 x 3 cm
Shipping Weight: 640 g

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #29,400 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Egyptian author al Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) weaves a vivid tapestry of clashing cultures in post-9/11 Chicago. Dr. Ra'fat Thabit, an Egyptian-American professor at the University of Illinois Medical School, has burrowed deep into American culture, but finds his identity threatened after his rebellious daughter falls under the sway of a shady boyfriend. Ra'fat's colleague, Dr. Muhammad Shamay, retreats from his American wife into extended reveries of his life in Cairo in the 1970s when he was young and in love with a revolutionary. His histology student, Nagi Abd al-Samad, really wants to be a poet. Nagi begins a relationship with an American girl named Wendy (who just so happens to be Jewish). Meanwhile, Shymaa Muhammadi, a medical student who wears a veil, finds her traditional values under siege when Tariq Haseeb, another Egyptian med student, begins seducing her with dogged persistence. The characters are beautifully realized—Ra'fat's family trouble is especially well done—and though their cumulative effect is muted, each of the story lines is individually compelling. (Oct.)
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Review

"...Al Aswany's knack for making the personal political." (New York magazine )

"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 )

"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 writes about his Egyptian characters with charm, gentle humor, and genuine conviction." (New York Times Book Review )

"While the book explores political points, it's ultimately a pluralist drama, complete with cliffhangers." (Washington Post Express )

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	78% buy the item featured on this page: Chicago: A Novel 3.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 17.61
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3.0 out of 5 stars "May God enable me to withstand my misfortune", Jan 1 2009

By	Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Although this novel is set in the city of Chicago many of its characters have extending lives, hopes and aspirations back to their home country in Egypt. About the immigrant experience and about the human condition, the people that pepper Alaa Al Aswany's story are cocooned in their new city, either as newly arrived students or those who consider themselves so completely American, but still hold the delicate cultural tendrils for their homeland. With very little plot the story reverberates around the oblique relationships of a number of conflicted characters, beginning in the campus of the University of Illinois Medical Centre. It is here that we meet Ra'fat, who came to the United States in the 1960's but now spurns his birth country: "I have quit being an Egyptian" he fanatically tells his work colleagues.

Married to Chris, an American, Ra'fat clashes with her over what to do about their rebellious daughter Sarah. He's in the grip of deathly jealously towards her current artist boyfriend Jeff and he just can't stand the idea that his daughter is in love with another man and be having a relationship outside marriage. Jeff likes to snort drugs and seems to be holding Sarah in his deadly psychedelic grip. When Ra'fat isn't pouring his heart out to John Graham, an old leftist hippy who marched in the civil rights movement, he's haranguing in defense of Western culture with perhaps even the mentality of the Eastern men which he constantly attacks and mocks.

Meanwhile, the vulnerable Nagi writes a journal that no else will read, an aspiring poet he writes for himself in order to record the points of change in his life while he moves from his old world, the only world he's known to a new and exciting world that seems to be filled with possibilities and probabilities. It is the young students Shaymaa and Tariq who give the novel its romantic core. Shaymaa holds on to her diligence and persistence, determined to turn over a new leaf and leave behind the 35 years of life in Egypt. Even as she lands at O'Hare Airport she battles her feelings of dejection as she faces the waves of Americans, men and women, "streaming forth from all directions" and shying away from her because "I am Arab and because I am veiled."

Taraq loves Shaymaa and respects her and wants to embrace her, to express his feelings, no more no less. But he seems at war against the material he must study and the sexual desires that so consume him. Certainly the months that Shaymaa spends in Chicago made her think about her life differently and she begins to have doubts about the established principles she grew up holding to be sacred. As Taraq and Shaymaa play out their affair, the other characters in the drama all come together, acting out their various bi-cultural dysfunctions with an unpredictably that fuels much of the drama. Perhaps the most heartbreaking character is Marwa, Danana's unhappy wife who has been forced to give up on her dream of grand love. Content to immerse herself in he dreams, she regrets that she has married such a mature man who has unfortunately turned out to be a bully and a tyrant and who abuses and mistreats her.

When the novel isn't descending into colorful melodrama, many of the characters are either raging against the evils and decadence of America or waxing poetic about the systematic corruption back in their homeland. Sexuality, American racism and radical politics both in the USA and in Egypt reverberate throughout, while Aswany intuitively highlights some the many problems that Egyptian immigrants have "fitting in" to American society. Often the author is too didactic, the narrative reading like an over-extended lecture, yet the story is also filled with a vibrant energy, particularly the energy of the city of Chicago, dramatic and erotic, and also poignant, this is often a seductive tale of various characters as they try to cope with their lot in life, often torn between the old as they search for meaning and a place in the new world. Mike Leonard January 09.

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