The Automobile Club of Egypt

Reviews

The Christian Science Monitor’s 10 Best Books of August

“[A] scathing, brilliantly executed novel . . . brimming with a large cast of memorable characters, including a corpulent, sex-addicted king; a royal pimp; and a seditious prince.”
            —Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times
 
“The Automobile Club unfolds in the post-World War II years preceding another upheaval: the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 . . . Then as now, [the novel] suggests, an old order's stubbornly protracted death delays a promising new world from being born . . . Al Aswany tells that story on a sprawling Dickensian canvas . . . [with] cliff-hanging chapter endings and his comic grotesques — including Kamel's younger brother, an improbable gigolo.”
            —Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
 
“Gripping . . . a page-turner.”
            —Robert Collison, The Toronto Star

“Seductive . . . boasts rich and rewarding material . . . [Al Aswany] populates the fabled city’s chief luxury retreat with intriguing men and women whose myriad travails lure the reader into their personal lives . . . [and] continues his newfound practice of probing the hearts and minds of one spirited cast of disparate Egyptian characters after another.”
            —Rayyan Al-Shawaf, The Boston Globe
 
“Wonderful . . . almost impossible to put down . . . combines terrific storytelling with historical empathy . . . and a throng of believable, vigorously drawn characters . . . The fast-moving stories of the Gaafar siblings, as well as that of Wright’s rebellious daughter . . . include political intrigue, brutal retribution, forbidden love affairs, sexual peculiarity and, I am happy to say, gratifying comeuppances.”
            —Katherine A. Powers, Star Tribune

“[A] raucous, technicolor novel . . . [and a] compulsively readable story, painted on a vast canvas . . . [with] crisp chapters, often ending in cliff-hangers . . . Al Aswany’s novel stands as a searing examination of worker subjugation and other injustices . . . its blazing heart is the seething discontent that led to the 1952 Revolution.”
            —Poornima Apte, Booklist
 
“A roller-coaster ride, each chapter building to a critical point, then plunging into one of the other plots, like a Dickens novel . . . for those who love realism and excellent character-based fiction, with a dash of Marxism.”
            —Robert E. Brown, Library Journal
 
 “Al Aswany digs into the past — specifically into the fin-de-siècle ineptitude of Ottoman rule, during which the real power in Egypt was Britain . . . Characters pass in and out — some through the front door, some through the service entrance — chattering about Big Ideas (love, lust, death, enfranchisement) while embodying them in small foibles . . . [Al Aswany’s novels] are national epics of the intimate: they remind their readers that every household hosts its own incarnations of fundamentalism, despotism, corruption, and graft.”
            —Joshua Cohen, Harper’s Magazine
 
“Myriad colorful details, intertwining narratives, and dramatic cliffhangers form an earthy, entertaining contrast to the novel's sober preoccupations—namely, the human spirit's capacity to both transcend and be crushed by oppressive systems . . . Al Aswany memorably evokes corrupt British-occupied Egypt in the years before the 1952 revolution.”
            —Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week)
 
“A charming, earthy, resourceful storyteller . . . [Al Aswany] might seduce even readers closer to Times Square than to Tahrir Square . . . so soon after the 2011 revolution, the novel at its simplest level may serve to remind Egyptians and others involved in the Arab Spring of some of the historical reasons so many pursued democracy and how elusive it remains.”
            —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Expand reviews