Novelist chronicles Egypt’s rough revolutionary road
Alaa Al Aswany, the author of "The Yacoubian Building," has published a compendium of newspaper columns that trace the arc of Egypt’s recent political upheavals from the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 to the election of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last year.
As the fourth anniversary of the Tahrir Square demonstrations that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak approaches, it is hard to be optimistic about Egypt’s political trajectory.
Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany's new book "Democracy is the Answer" underlines the reasons for this pessimism even as it argues that a real democratic transformation is Egypt’s only long-term hope.
A compendium of columns Aswany wrote for the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm from early 2011 to June 2014, it traces the arc of the country’s political upheaval from Mubarak's ouster to the reversion under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to a system of sycophancy, injustice and brutality that rivals the worst abuses of the Mubarak regime.
Euphoric at Mubarak’s removal, Aswany — whose 2002 novel, "The Yacoubian Building," depicted the dysfunction and corruption of Egyptian society under the longtime leader — discusses his early anxiety about where the revolution is headed. From his first columns, Aswany worries that while Mubarak is gone, the regime he led endures.
