(From Amazon) The Yacoubian Building holds all that Egypt was and has become over the 75 years since its namesake was built on one of downtown Cairo’s main boulevards. From the pious son of the building’s doorkeeper and the raucous, impoverished squatters on its roof, via the tattered aristocrat and the gay intellectual in its apartments, to the ruthless businessman whose stores occupy its ground floor, each sharply etched character embodies a facet of modern Egypt -- where political corruption, ill-gotten wealth, and religious hypocrisy are natural allies, where the arrogance and defensiveness of the powerful find expression in the exploitation of the weak, where youthful idealism can turn quickly to extremism, and where an older, less violent vision of society may yet prevail. Alaa Al Aswany’s novel caused an unprecedented stir when it was first published in 2002 and has remained the world’s best selling novel in the Arabic language since.

About the Author
Alaa Al Aswany was born in 1957. A dentist, whose first office was in the Yacoubian Building, Al Aswany has written prolifically for Egyptian newspapers across the political spectrum on literature, politics, and social issues.

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It's flat-out disturbing, it paints the portrait of multiple sectors of Egyptian society and it's rotten to the core.

-The aspiring police candidate who turns to the mosque after he is rejected from the academy simply because his father works as a doorman

-His ex-girl friend who finally gives in and starts giving her boss what he wants, because that's the only way a woman in Egypt can hold a job outside the home

-The gay journalist living in fear the police will raid his meeting place

-"The Big Guy" aka, Mubarak, who gets a 25% cut of any significant commerce

Etc., etc.

Disturbing, but insightful.