The Yacoubian Building, the first novel of the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany, sold well over a million copies in 35 languages, was made into a film, and turned him overnight into one of the most listened to voices in the Arab world. What followed — Chicago, set in the city in which Al Aswany did his masters degree in dentistry, and some short stories — did not have quite the charm of his sprawling houseful of driven, troubled, passionate characters trying to survive in a country of extreme social ills. The Automobile Club of Egypt is a second Yacoubian, a saga built around an institution, rich in absurdity and colour and at the same time an important social satire and a harsh criticism of modern Egypt.
If the novel has a flaw, it lies in its odd series of seemingly unrelated starts, among people and settings that later play no part in the tale. But Al Aswany is above all a superb storyteller and creator of characters: 50 pages in, there is no turning back.
Cairo’s Royal Automobile Club — a real place — was founded by a mixture of foreigners and Turkish aristocrats in 1924 on the model of the Carlton Club in London. In theory, it was to issue licenses, regulate speed limits and generally control Egypt’s rapidly growing passion for the motor car. In practice, it became a place where the rich and the titled came to drink, gamble and indulge themselves, with King Farouk I among its members. Al Aswany describes it at the height of its glory, conjuring up a staff of servants ruled over by a racist British manager together with the King’s sadistic Sudanese Nubian valet Alku and his sidekick, the excitable Hameed.
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