Chicago

Alaa Al Aswany · b. 1957 · Egypt

Originally Shikaghu (Arabic) · translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab

Why it matters

Egyptian graduate students and professors in a University of Illinois histology department carry the regime's corruption and repression across the ocean with them. Al Aswany turns his own years of medical study abroad into a panorama of Egypt in exile.

At a glance

Multiple interwoven plotlines in brisk, accessible, journalistic prose, as in his other novels.