By Mursi Saad El-Din Fame normally comes after a long line of achievements, be they literary, political or economic. But I have recently witnessed an instant meteoric rise to fame. In two successive weeks the Sunday Times Culture supplement published two articles about Alaa Al Aswaany and his novel The Yacoubian Building. The first was a long review of the novel, which was published by Fourth Estate. The review is by Peter Kemp, one of the leading writers on culture. It has the title "Egyptian Treasures" . The review gives a bird's-eye view of what the reviewer calls "Alaa Al Aswaany's brave novel about his nation in the 1990's" . In analysing the characters of the novel, Peter Kemp shows real knowledge of modern Egyptian fiction. While he says that the interplay of characters can call to mind Balzac , the most immediate influence is Egypt's Nobel prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz -- in particular his 1947 novel, Midaq Alley, with its mixed community jostling together in a Cairo backwater. Last week Bryan Appleyard, one of my favourite writers, published in Culture an interview with Al-Aswaany. It has the intriguing opening, "His novels set Islamist teeth on edge -- as a surgeon of the human heart, this is one Cairo dentist we should all consult ." The Bryan Appleyard interview covers two full pages, with a photo of Al Aswaany. Appleyard's previous interviews were always with leading figures in the literary and artistic fields, notably from Britain or the United States, so having an Egyptian interviewee is quite an event. The writer's interviews are more than just a question and answer. It includes comments and interventions that clearly show Appleyard's deep interest in his victim . He begins by referring to Aswaany's novel The Yacoubian Building which he describes as the biggest-selling novel in Arabic... now red- hot in 17 other languages . It has been made into a film, he goes on to say, which is the biggest-budget Egyptian movie ever. I can't reproduce the whole interview, but I shall choose some excerpts which reflect Aswaany's thoughts and ideas. He will not give up his dental practice because "you have to have a profession apart from fiction-writing. There is no way you could make a living from fiction. I am very exceptional, he goes on to say. I am making money from translations. Naguib Mahfouz, a great Arab writer and Nobel prize winner, kept on working for the government until the age of retirement. But the most important thing is, through dentistry, I have contact with human beings every day, and this is very useful." It is often said that, where there is always a first novel, there very rarely is a second. But Aswaany has broken this rule with his second novel Chicago. I have just received a copy of the novel, but have just started reading it. We have to take what its author has to say about it. He writes that the serialisation of the novel in a Cairo newspaper produced so many Islamic threats that he got them printed over an entire page. Appleyard interrupts the questions by giving a summary of the novel and his analysis is well worth presenting. " The Yacoubian Building is not, however, an explicitly political book. The place is the hero (there is such a building in Cairo, though the fictional one is quite different)". He then goes on to list the diverse influences on Aswaany. He was affected by the Latin American writers Gabriel Garc�a Marquez and Vargas Llosa, whom he read in the original Spanish which he had learnt. He also read Balzac and La Bruyère, and later he took in Hemingway. I like Aswaany description of Hemingway's writings. He's a turning point in literature, he says . "He has his own style, this stratified text. It looks very simple, but it's not as simple as it looks. It's fascinating and a great lesson for writers. I could give The Old Man and the Sea to my 10 year old daughter and she'd find it an interesting story about a fish and an old man, but you know it means a lot more."
