The Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany's second novel is a bit of a curate's egg, or maybe a mullah's omelette: on the one hand it's a racy campus novel set among the Egyptian ?migr? community of the University of Illinois, while on the other it's full of undigested lumps of socio-political commentary that appear to have been cut and pasted from an encyclopedia. But despite the catastrophically pedantic opening chapter, there are some treats. The best characters are worthy of an Arabic David Lodge, particularly Professor Graham, a sad, pony-tailed relic of the 1960s counter-culture who pores over his ...
