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“... it’s the largest in the Middle East – makes it difficult to control. The film adaptation of Alaa al-Aswany’s bestselling novel, The Yacoubian Building, which exposes sexual harassment, police brutality and political corruption in modern Egypt, released last year, quickly recouped its $3 million budget (the highest ever for an Arab movie). The ...”

“... claimed to me at the time, it isn’t easy terrain for fiction writers. The Egyptian novelist Alaa al Aswany became famous for telling the crowds in the square that that ‘a revolution is like falling in love.’ He didn’t add that people fall out of love. Describing the floods of emotion that one feels at the barricades – in prose, at any rate ...”

“... to lock them up. Revolutionary artists (including such international celebrities as the novelist Alaa al-Aswany and the comedian Bassem Youssef) were now regarded with growing suspicion, while the most despised propagandists of the Mubarak era were praised. It became clear that the Brothers and the would-be revolutionaries were to foot the bill for ...”

“... Nights to the Middle East and its impact on the modern Arabic novel. The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswany, published too recently to be included in Jarrar’s discussion, continues the process: an enthralling piece of storytelling as well as a brave and straight-dealing account of Cairo, al-Aswany’s novel ...”

“... The lack of normalising judgment, much less homophobia, in his work stands in contrast to, say, Alaa al-Aswany’s Yacoubian Building, where gays are represented as sex-crazed, dandified predators. Ibrahim stumbled on his subject, and his style, by accident. After his release from prison in 1964, he planned to write a novel about the construction of ...”