Search - Chicago: A Novel (P.S.)

Al Aswany, a practicing dentist and critic of the Egyptian government who hosts cultural salons in Cairo best known for the Yacoubian Building, spent three years studying for a dentistry fellowship at the University of Illinois. Chicago, in his hands, becomes a field of contradictions where Egyptian and American characters collide like particles in a pinball machine. Set on a similar campus of a medical college in post-9/11 Chicago, the narrative ricochets between Egyptian graduate students, American and Egyptian professors, and other associated characters on the eve of the Egyptian president's visit to Chicago. However, within each chapter a charming narrator gives American readers a glimpse of Egyptian mentality--its tone is consistent with my own limited interaction with Egyptians--and how they experience America. The constant and sudden shuffling makes the book easy to put down, but not necessarily to pick up again. Many of the characters are not sympathetic, and there are quite a few unexpected sexual themes covered. Al Aswany obviously has a foreigner's grasp of the American characters. However, he has done the same for the Egyptian-in-America experience as in his earlier expose of Egyptian life, while drawing some parallels between the two. While miles away, maybe Chicago has much in common with Cairo.