Critical Mass

Alaa Al Aswany on What to Read this Summer

By Alaa Al Aswany

The month of June kicks off Reading the World. As part of this project, the NBCC has asked writers from around the globe to recommend a book from beyond these shores. We asked novelist Alaa Al Aswany, author of “The Yacoubian Building,” (translated by Humphrey Davies) what he had to recommend. Here is what he said:

“I would recommend 'What Happened to the Egyptians,' a wonderful book by the famous arab thinker Galal Amin, translated to English by American University in Cairo. This book has been a non-fiction bestseller in the arab world. And it reflects interesting social changes in modern society in Egypt.