Sex, money, and politics are the driving forces of society in bestselling novel from Alaa Al Aswany. A medley of Egyptian and American lives collides on the campus of the University of Illinois Medical Center in a post-9/11 Chicago, and crises of identity abound. This tightly plotted page-turner is set far from the downtown Cairo of Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, but is no less unflinching an examination of contemporary Egyptian lives.

Alaa Al Aswany was born in 1957. A dentist by profession, Al Aswany is the author of the bestselling novel The Yacoubian Building (AUC Press, 2004) and the novelle collection Friendly Fire (AUC Press 2009). Farouk Abdel Wahab is Ibn Rushd Professorial Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Chicago. His most recent translation is Khairy Shalaby’s The Lodging House (AUC Press, 2006).