The Yacoubian Building is a novel by Alaa Al Aswany, translated by Denys Humphrey Davies and made into film by Marwan Hamed - the biggest budget ever for an Egyptian film. 

A charming friend took us to see the film at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and we fell in love with it.

See the film as soon as you can.  I cannot recommend it more strongly.

There is a fairly rubbish trailer on You Tube but we’ve brought you an interview with Alaa Al Aswany at the bottom of this article.

The ‘Middle East’ is the subject of this Autumn’s ‘block busters’ who promise a look into the war on terror, with the mildly cerebral action drama ‘The Kingdom’ and walking the political tight ropes in ’Rendition’ and ‘Lions for Lambs’.  All with big dollar actors portraying the American psyche as it wrestles with the rights and wrongs of their current war(s).  I may be wrong, but none of these films deal with the struggle within the Middle East, they are all about the use of Yankee muscle.

If you want to glimpse the other side, to comprehend, sample the essence, look no further than The Yacoubian Building.  It is a comedy, a drama, an action adventure, an exposé of the heart, of love, of hate, of power, rolled into one.

The Yacoubian Building is an intimate, sensitive journey into modern Cairo, a kaleidoscope of mini dramas whose characters are inexorably cast down the hairline fractures of a society with deep history wrestling with the forces of the modern world.  It is a long film, bring a cushion, but the final scene, for me at any rate, reverberated long after the film as it did, actually, sum up the film.

The film/book centres on the Yacoubian Building in the heart of Cairo, built in 1937 and inhabited by the powerful elites of different political eras and now inhabited by a mix of the wealthy and destitute.  The central dialogue of the film revolves around two characters inhabiting the same building; the beautiful Bossania, Hend Sabri, and the aged, fading playboy Zaki Pasha, Adel Imam.  Bossania is a young, impoverished woman desperate to maintain her dignity and ‘modern’ values in the face of the sexual advances of her employers.  Zaki Pasha the last of the aristocrats, “a respectable man” is old and hankers after the respect and liberty of his life before the “deformity” of the current epoch.  The two are the victims of modern Egyptian society and each from entirely different perspectives.  Modern Egypt is brought to life by their story and the other stories woven with in the plot.

See it at the ICA until 28th Oct - http://www.ica.org.uk/The%20Yacoubian%20Building+14861.twl

& at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton www.londonnet.co.uk/cinema/ritzycinema.html

Buy the book from the original publisher www.aucpress.com/pc-1865-6-the-yacoubian-building.aspx or www.amazon.co.uk

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