These days, it’s showing the screen adaptation of The Yacoubian Building, based on the eponymous novel by Alaa al-Aswany. Downtown Cairo’s Odeon Theater charges half the price of other first-run film venues and is consequently always packed. I haven't seen it yet and heard very conflicting opinions about it, and Maria's review puts it in the proper socio-political context.

Regrettably, in July 2006 the Egyptian Parliament censored the film version of the novel.Īmie Daraves is a Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, intern.My friend Maria Golia, writer, columnist and author of Cairo: City of Sand (What? You haven't read it yet? Do you like staying ignorant about contemporary Egypt and Umm ad-Dounia? What are you waiting for ?) has sent me this review of Egypt's star-packed, hit movie of the summer, The Yacoubian Building, based on the Alaa Al Aswany novel of the same name.

Indeed, The Yacoubian Building was a rare victory for freedom of expression in Egypt. Thus the underlying tension, which the novel boldly puts forth, is one of religious morality versus secularism, and one of tradition versus modernity. By using non-traditional characters, Al Aswany sheds light on a number of the country’s most sensitive taboos, most notably corruption, prison torture, homosexuality, and the rise of fundamental Islam. Since it was first released in Arabic in 2002, The Yacoubian Building has been shrouded by controversy in a country where the Ministry of Information (and, by extension, the state-owned media) have a history of controlling content with an iron fist. By intertwining their stories, Al Aswany creates an ensemble of sympathetic characters living at the crossroads of change in a modernizing society. Representing a cross-section of class and religion in Egypt, as their lives unfold for the reader so, too, do the many hardships of contemporary Cairo life. Set in an actual building in downtown Cairo, the controversial best-seller weaves together the lives of several characters to create a daring social critique.įrom the underprivileged locals who squat on the roof, to the building’s legitimate tenants-a politician, a store owner, and a gay scholar-the Yacoubian is home to Cairenes young and old, rich and poor.

By Alaa Al Aswany, The American University in Cairo Press, 2004, 245 pp.Ī rare and penetrating look into modern Egyptian society can be found in Alaa Al Aswany’s novel, The Yacoubian Building.

The yacoubian building review