my indifference toward this book could just be a matter of poor translation. al aswany is egyptian and the book is originally written in arabic, i believe.
the book follows the lives of several egyptian students studying histology at the university of chicago. each one represents a different axe in need of grinding and i think this is where a possible poor translation could be at fault. either that or its just poor writing in the first place as the characters are nothing more than flat symbols to a different horrible end. al aswany is not too confident in the american dream and uses his characters to tragically illustrate its failure in a variety of ways. if only they weren’t so shallow and stilted. backgrounds, motives, dialogue all feel crafted specifically to relay a message. you can feel al aswany’s clunky hand in everything; there is no subtlety here.
and thats too bad because the issues are very real and just as important as al aswany clearly wants them to feel. but instead of breathing life into these characters and their hardships he has essentially offered up a exaggerated chick tract versions of real life tragedies: two young egyptians corrupted by american lifestyle start an innocent love thats ended by an unwanted pregnancy and abortion, an idealistic new student is rooted out by corruption in both the egyptian government and our own and is sent to some kind of guantanamo situation for simply voicing a counter opinion, an egyptian man who loves the united states is betrayed when his daughter is killed by drugs…etc. its all very dramatic but in a way that soap operas are dramatic, an eye roll on every page.
this has close to a 4 rating on goodreads and i have no idea how or why.
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