Yakupyan Apartment

The novel by Ala Al Aswani, one of Egypt's social realist writers, takes place in Egypt in the 90s, at a time when the Arab nationalism prevalent in the 1950s and 60s was long gone and political Islam was burgeoning. Yakupyan Apartment, where people of all classes and types live and is losing the traces of its past glory, is, in a sense, the symbol of the change that Cairo and Egypt have undergone, where different cultures live together. The characters in the book, with their innocents and sinners, fraudsters and terrorists, men and women, portray the different aspects and changing values of modern Egypt with extraordinary realism.

When Ala Al Aswani's novel was published in 2002, it caused great controversy in his country, and since then it has become the most read and translated Arabic novel in the world. Yakupyan Apartment, which was also adapted for the big screen, was selected among the best foreign film candidates at the 2006 Oscar Awards.