Alaa Al Aswany
Photo Credit Jerome Scholomoff

Subscribe to the Writers on the Record Podcast. Over 35 collected interviews straight to your iPod.

SubscribeiTunes

 

Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman

Alaa Al Aswany / October 26, 2008 / Chicago: A Novel

Egyptian author and journalist Alaa Al Aswany is the biggest-selling novelist in the Arab-speaking world. His earlier book, The Yacoubian Building, topped best-seller lists for several years, was translated into over twenty languages, and became a wildly successful film. In this interview, Cairo-based Al Aswany talks about his latest work, Chicago: A Novel, set in and around the University of Illinois and tracking a group of Egyptians, Americans, and their intertwined relationships. As with all Al Aswany's writing, race, class, sex and politics— infused with a palpable disdain for the regime of Hosni Mubarek (present, but never named)—informs the complicated, compelling situations.Listen Now

Victoria Lautman Interviews...