The Automobile Club of Egypt
Alaa Al Aswany
“What were they up to, and how could they know the names of the characters in my unpublished novel, which no living creature apart from me had read? Could fictional characters really come to life?”
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From the bestselling author of The Yacoubian Building comes a novel bursting at the seams with Egyptian life
Cairo at the very end of Ottoman rule. Behind the doors of the Automobile Club of Egypt, Egyptian staff attend to the every need of Cairo’s European elite - the way they always have done, it seems.
But soon the social upheaval out on the street will break its way through the club’s gilded doors, and its inhabitants above and below stairs must all confront their choices: to live safely without dignity, or to fight for their rights and risk everything.
“A microcosm of corruption and oppression in Egypt … Aswany brings a mix of burning indignation and unstoppable exuberance that is all his own to this swarming picture of a world on the brink of shattering change”
sunday Times
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“One of Egypt’s most valuable writers”
guardian
“A scathing, brilliantly executed novel”
new York Times
“A wonderful storyteller”
spectator
“Among the best writers in the Middle East today … Al Aswany has his own magic”
guardian
Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa Al Aswany’s first novel The Yacoubian Building was longlisted for The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006 and has sold over a million copies worldwide. He is also the author of Chicago and the short story collection, Friendly Fire. His work has been translated into 29 languages and published in over 100 countries. Al Aswany was named by The Times as one of the best 50 authors to have been translated into English in the last 50 years. He speaks Arabic, English, French, and Spanish.
‘Al Aswany is above all a superb storyteller and creator of characters: 50 pages in, there is no turning back … A remarkable and devastating portrait of a deeply unhappy society, in the guise of a novel that is at once funny, perceptive and affectionate’
Caroline Moorehead
The Spectator