Yacoubian Building

The Yacoubian Building holds all that Egypt was and has become over the 75 years since its namesake was built on one of downtown Cairos main boulevards. From the pious son of the buildings 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 Egyptone 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 Aswanys novel caused an unprecedented stir when it was first published in 2002 and has remained the worlds best selling novel in the Arabic language since.