Located in downtown Cairo, the once elegant Art Deco apartment building is home to an elderly playboy, a corrupt politician, the editor of a leading newspaper and many others whose lives are intertwined in this novel which has become a two year bestseller in Egypt.
Each person will be put in difficult situations, for example Busayna will have to accept being sexually harassed just so she can keep her job and provide for her family. While, Souad will accept being a second wife to a wealthy man so she care for her son at the expense of having to live far away from him. And, so the stories of the residents unfold.
Perhaps the vignette that was most poignant to me was Taha's story. He has long dreamed of joining the police academy but when he fails being accepted because his father is a doorman of the Yacoubian Building, his life begins a downward spiral from drifting apart from his sweetheart, Busayna, to joining a religious militancy group.
There are a lot of characters (a character list is even included in the beginning) and a lot of drama but I liked the way the writer handled each story, moving deftly back and forth with each of the different characters. For me, it was a nice break sometimes to go from some of the less likeable characters to see how the others were getting by and so on. And, never once did I feel like a character was not well developed or that I didn't get enough of their story.
To give the readers a glimpse of modern day Egypt the author doesn't shy away from exposing political corruption, sexual harassment, religious extremism and other controversial issues. It's a bleak outlook but tempered with a bit of hope in the end. A worthy-read.
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Added 03/07