The last time I used this space to promote a book signing at Politics and Prose bookstore, only three people showed up and I was, well, mortified. Please don’t embarrass me internationally by failing to join me this Friday night, October 24 at 7 p.m. at P&P when the courageous Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany reads from, comments on and signs his new book Chicago (Harper Collins). (Politics and Prose is located at 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW in Washington, DC.) P&P says Al-Aswany, “Employs the same narrative structure that was so effective in The Yacoubian Building. These linked stories focus on the physicians in the Histology Department of a Chicago hospital. The heavy hand of Egyptian security threatens several of the characters — even in the United States.”

Alaa Al-Aswany is a dentist who studied in Chicago and now practices in downtown Cairo, Egypt. He’s also a journalist who writes an opposition newspaper column, and a novelist of growing reputation. His third novel, The Yacoubian Building, first published in Arabic in 2002 and then in the United States in 2004, broke every taboo in modern Egyptian literature by talking openly about the country’s corruption, religious fanaticism, gruesome penal system and repressive government. The book, according to Egypt Today, “Delves into a mix of power, corruption, sex, exploitation, poverty and extremism ……..[The Yacoubian Building] lucidly captures the varied aspects of Egyptian life: straight, gay, rich, poor, powerful and powerless.”

What Egypt Today didn’t write is that you just don’t talk about such things in Egypt, at least not out in public — independent authors, journalists and bloggers are routinely thrown in jail when they divulge the varied aspects of Egyptian life. But Al-Aswany’s novel not only became a runaway bestseller, it was made into an incredibly popular movie. Last year, I had a chance to talk with him after hours in his office. A handsome, pleasant man of about 40 and starting a family, he was almost nonchalant about the risks he takes writing his newspaper columns and the gamble he took with The Yacoubian Building, where he had his first dental office. He recalled how he started to write the book with no knowledge of two subjects that figure prominently in the narrative: Egyptian jails, and homosexuality, which is illegal in Egypt. He inadvertently solved both quandaries by hanging out in homosexual bars, and getting arrested and jailed for his temerity.

I won’t beleaguer you with a review of The Yacoubian Building — just go to www.Amazon.com and buy it. If you don’t agree it’s an amazing story, I’ll personally buy back your copy. As for his new novel, Chicago, come meet Alaa Al-Aswany yourself on Friday day night and ask him what goes on in an Histology Depratment. For those of you outside of Washington, DC, I’ll write a commentary on the evening and Chicago and post it next week.