All in all, they constitute a loathsome bunch: conniving, egotistic, coarse, violent and dejected. In their stead, a new breed of Cairenes has moved in. Gone are the crème de la crème of Egyptian society who lived in the building during the city's heydays of the thirties and forties. The book focuses mainly on the residents of the Yacoubian building, a once-chic but now rundown edifice that acts as a metaphor for Cairo's own deterioration. Constructed as a series of vignettes about characters whose fates will soon converge, a stylistic device highly popular in today's Hollywood, Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany's Arabic best-seller The Yacoubian Building brings to life a seedy and despicable Cairo where only the corrupted and the corruptible can fare well.
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