The Yacoubian Building

Uneven novel - good parts were its rendition of how a corrupt society destroys the lives and hopes of its citizens and its elegant readable style and bad points were a sort of sticky sleaziness around its handling of sex and a soapy depiction of its polyglot characters.

Just finished reading the book on holiday. It was good to be exposed to such a different culture in this extremely well written and superbly crafted novel. A lot of love and humour along with a no holds barred view of the despair and depravity that seem to be part of the human condition. Using the building itself to tie together all the characters from such different backgrounds and social strata is a master stroke.

"The Yacoubian Building" is a novel about modern-day Cairo, using the residents of the building as a broad cross-section of Egyptian society. Through their various exploits, we learn about businessmen, politics, closet homosexuality, students, entrepeneurs and families living hand to mouth.The novel clearly aims to give you a broad vision of the contradictions and peculiarities of life as a modern Egyptian covering no fewer than 12 basic characters. The problem is that the individual stories are picked up for sometimes no more than a paragraph before Al Aswany resumes another story thread. Although eventually about half a dozen characters evolve into central figures, even then with so little interaction between the stories, the book as a whole remains rather unfulfilling. The characters for me were sketches rather than portraits; very much lacking any credible depth. The fractured, vignette-based narrative also made this less than compelling and especially in the first half, led to a repeated need to refer back to the list of main characters to remember who people were.What connects the characters is the Yacoubian buiding itself, which is one of the very few locations described with any kind of detail and some general themes. Al Aswany highlights four broad themes that affect all levels of Egytian life: Endemic corruption; Sexual politics (the inequality and exploitation of women and the problems of homosexuality); Religion in a secular state and finally the seemingly insurmountable chasm between rich and poor. These are fascinating themes and there are many interesting episodes highlighting the challenges and contradictions inherent in living and surviving in modern Cairo. However, I would argue that almost all of these themes have been better and more satisfyingly explored and developed in other work from North Africa and the Middle East, with the notable exception perhaps of the homosexual storyline.So, as a broad introduction to North African/Middle Eastern fiction this is worth a read. It may put some readers off with its stop-start narrative and may prove insubstantial to others, but as a general starting point or overview it's fine. If you'd like more character detail and more depth though, may I recommend Yasmina Khadra, Ahmed Abodehman, Ibrahim al-Koni, Ahdaf Soueif, Hisham Matar, Nawal El Saadawi and of course, the Naguib Mahfouz.

This is an engaging read. There are perhaps too many characters with their own stories so they lack depth. However, he has a talent for establishing a character quickly.A very negative view of Egyptian society and cultureAmusing and also grim

I love the book, but give it four stars because I don't like the bittiness of the book. Just as I'm getting into the story of one or other of the characters, I get to read about another set of characters. This makes me lose the plot on a regular basis. In addition, I don't really believe that a young woman (Busayna) could really fall deeply in love with an old man (Zaky), even if he is a wonderful lover. Still, that may be my life experience! But for the rest, yes, I love the author's insight in the minds of the other characters. I admire the book for it's honesty and realism, still remaining light and sensitive. I sure would like to read more from this author!