The Yacoubian Building

Translator’s Note

Alaa Al Aswany, born in 1957 and a dentist by profession, has written from an early age. His published works include novels, short stories, and a novella, as well as prolific contributions on literature, politics, and social issues to newspapers and magazines covering the political spectrum. The Yacoubian Building is his second published novel. Since appearing in 2002, it has gone through several editions and was the bestselling Arabic novel for the years 2002 and 2003. It was voted Best Novel for 2003 by listeners to Egypt’s Middle East Broadcasting service. In 2004 Al Aswany published a novella and nine short stories in Arabic in a collection called Niran Sadiqa (Friendly Fire). He is at work on a novel entitled Chicago. The Yacoubian Building exists, at the address given in the novel. Indeed, it was there that the author’s father (Abbas Al Aswany, himself a noted author and winner of the State Prize for Literature for 1974) maintained an office, and there that the author opened his first dental clinic. However, a wanderer on Cairo’s Suleiman Basha Street will notice that the real Yacoubian Building does not match its literary namesake in every detail: rather than being in the “high European style” and boasting “balconies decorated with Greek faces carved from stone,” it is a restrained albeit elegant exercise in art deco, innocent of balconies. Similarly, the real Halegian’s Bar is situated on Abd el Khaliq Sarwat Street, rather than Antikkhana Street. The same logic applies to the characters: while many Egyptian readers believe they know who a given character “really” is, few are portraits from life and in most cases a number of originals have contributed aspects to them. Likewise, the reader need not pay too much heed to the fact that the events described nominally take place before and during Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait: the novel reflects the Egypt of the present.

It would be a mistake, in other words, to assume that everything mentioned in The Yacoubian Building is an exact portrait of an identifiable existing original. While the world of the book is undeniably that of today’s Egypt, the author achieves this sense of verisimilitude by taking recognizable features from multiple known originals to form new creations. That these collages are so convincing is a measure of the novel’s genius and explains in part its appeal.

Inevitably, the book contains numerous references to people and events that are likely to be unfamiliar to the non-Egyptian reader. These are explained in the Glossary at the end of the book. Quotations from the Qur’an are italicized and Arberry’s translation has been used (Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, Oxford University Press, 1998); a list of references follows the Glossary.

While taking full responsibility for any errors, the translator acknowledges his debt to Siham Abdel Salam, Jacinthe Assaad, Madiha Doss, Maria Golia, Fawzi Mansour, A. Rushdi Nasef, Sayed Ragab, Diya Rashwan, and, above all, the author for help on various aspects of the text.

This translation is dedicated to Gasim.