The Yacoubian Building

The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany is a book that I recommend that everyone in the class should read. The book’s background is important in order to give meaning to what the importance of the context and content that the book projects. This book is set in modern day Cairo, Egypt and the storyline revolves around the Yacoubian Building which is the title of the book. It looks into the lives of the people who are occupants, and these lives are a significantly representative of the change in

the novels Midaq Alley and The Yacoubian Building, we are shown the ongoing, daily struggles of the working-poor in both colonial and postcolonial Egypt. Both share central, overarching themes such as debauchery, desperation, and unstable political situations. The two settings are both examples of microcosms, “cities within a city”. Midaq Alley is a small, dead-end neighborhood in 1940’s Cairo that consists of various shops and apartments. Within each of these buildings are characters that live completely

The novel of interest The Yacoubian Building written by Alaa Al Aswany is praised by scholars since the material highlights the taboo of homosexuality and offers insight about Egyptian society and its culture. Based on the material provided in the text, one must highlight that the characters in the book utilize their physicality and charm as a tool to harness control over others in order to meet personal demands and/or indulge in sexual desires. The characters Busayna and Hagg Muhammad Azzam take

use characters in Midaq Alley and The Yacoubian Building as lens for exploring the relationship between resistance and romantic love. Midaq Alley, published in 1947 and released in English in 1966, was written by the prolific Nobel prize-winning author, Naguib Mahfouz. The novel is set in Cairo during the Second World War and follows the inhabitants of the titular alley. One of the inhabitants is the young and beautiful Hamida, who lives in an apartment building with her adoptive mother. Mafouz makes

The Yacoubian Building, like many novels in the vein of historical fiction, contextualizes factual events through characterization and symbolism. Set in post-Nasser modern Egypt, the reader is introduced to a number of characters - a wealthy, promiscuous engineer; a young woman down on her luck; a boy turned quickly to fundamentalist attitudes just to name a few. These characters and their escapades provide more than just entertainment for the reader, however. Al-Aswany uses the characters in his

Lights.” These characteristics are so important to Egyptian male identity that this commentary was the basis for the Egyptian Ministry of Information to ban this book upon publishing in the late 1960s (Egypt’s Conscience). Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building is riddled with examples of sexual relationships, most of which are not necessarily mutually desired. In almost every instance of sex and sexuality in this book is established on some sort of transactional pretense with some kind of other undesirable

every couple decades and the country seemed to always be at war. “The Yacoubian Building”, a 2002 film, illustrated how the resulting corrupted government and abysmal economy affected Egypt’s population, especially the lower classes. Additionally, the viewer saw how these two factors led to both the appalling treatment of women and the rise of violent insurgency groups. One of the most evident aspects of “The Yacoubian Building” was the rampant corruption prevalent throughout the movie. The movie

Throughout the novel, Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz a reputation holds upmost significance of the lives of its citizens and is illustrated through the motif of gossip, symbolism of mirrors, and the motif of manipulation. Each character encountered with a dilemma refers to scandal as their means of escape. Through gossip, they suppress the good name of others in order to elevate their own reputation.  Also, manipulation is used in order to create a false image and augment positive outlook. The symbolism

The novel of interest The Yacoubian Building written by Alaa Al Aswany has been praised by scholars since the material highlights the taboo of homosexuality and offers insight about Egyptian society and its culture. The effects of gender roles of men and women of society present itself in the life and lifestyles of Hatim and Busayna who are two prominent characters in the text. Through reading the text, it becomes clear that normative understandings of gender confine both the male and female character

years all over the world and they have many different answers. Knowing the history of many different things in the life is very important because of one sufficient and helpful reason; knowing the history helps in understanding the present and in building the future. There are a lot of subjects and things that people should know their history, such as the history of a country, the history of a family, the history of arts, and the history of technology. Also, one of the most important things that people