Chicago

Acclaimed Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany plunges into the confounding world at the intersection of cultures new, abandoned and half-forgotten with a story set in modern-day Chicago. The characters who populate the pages of this novel are all portrayed in various stages of coming to terms with the American dream: an anti-establishment university professor, a devout muslim woman who wears a veil and is studying for her Ph.D., and an Egyptian informant who espouses no culture but money and power. The complex plot slowly draws these and others together in ways none of them could ever imagine, as their views of the world - along with the reader's - begin to shift.