An interview with Ala al Aswani about his new novel Chicago (Arabic). As someone who disliked his Yacoubian Building, I can't say I'm optimistic about the new ones.
The novel is selling like hotcakes. All you learn about it is that it has lots of explicit sex. Great marketing strategy.
He mentions in the interview that the character of the gay homosexual in The Yacoubian Building was excised from the TV series adaptation of the novel.
5 comments:
We all know that Sex sells! It's sad Amal, but ... it's true
I am curious about what you didn't like about Yacoubian Building, the novel, not the film. Is it always true that when something markets well, it is a fraud?
I mean the same things could apply to Sonallah Ibrahim whose novels market well as well, but he is a great writer who even turned down the Mahfouz literary Award.
I quite frankly like the style of the Arabic, the prose, and the suspense, and the embarrassing details...
It is funny how they can show prostitution, alcohol addicts, sexual abusers, drugs addicts, terrorism, corruption and murder but they can't show homosexuals on Tv! lol
the observer,
true. even when the representation is negative because that's what you have in The Yacoubian Building--as Aswani himself says in the interview I posted, homosexuality is another example of corruption.
ng,
I could've sworn I responded to your question a while back!! weird.
what I said is that i posted on yacoubian building several times on this blog. You can find with a simple search in the search box or by clicking on yacoubian building tag. I also said that I'm writing a paper on it you're welcome to read : ) in case you don't have enough work yan3i.
I am suspicious of "best sellers" especially ones that claim they are "distrubing". Disturbing books are usually not popular. sonallah is not popular the way aswani is. The man is just talked about as if he were the next mahfouz. And he just came out of no where. feeha inna!
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