A review by misspalah
The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany

challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I continued studying my heart out and was top of the class at the end of the year too. During the summer holiday, I didn't ask my father for pocket money or to take me on outings as I used to do. I was happy to stay at home, helping my mother and waiting for Kamel to come home at night. Then we would talk for a long time. Kamel was the person who understood me best in the whole world. I loved chatting with him. He would talk about anything with me: politics, art, literature. He used to tell me excitedly, "Egypt is a great country, Saleha, but it has not seized the moment. The Occupation has kept us all down, but if we expel the English, we can build a strong new democratic country."

He used to read classical and modern verse aloud to me. I loved to listen to him explaining the love poems. 'll never forget certain verses of Andalusian poetry. I adored the one that read:

• If my sin is allowing love to be my master, then all nights of love are sin,
• I repent of the sin, but when God forgives me, for you I atone.
• The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al-Aswany

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Honestly, if you dont read the book and just glance through the cover, you would have thought The Automobile Club of egypt is a story about fancy club for the luxury car enthusiasts in Egypt. That was also why i bought it in the first place without reading the synopsis which is totally my fault - my bad 😂. The premise was interesting - we were introduced to the nameless author of the story that trying to get away from Cairo so that he could at least take a break from his writer’s block. He incidentally met with 2 of his characters from the book that insisted to insert their narratives into it. This could be simply the figment of the author’s imagination or he just has lost it as some points but i trust the thought process of Alaa Al-aswany at this point so i kept on going until 150 pages. I rarely DNF book but this one really tested my patience to the core. We were introduced to Abd el-Aziz Gaafar’s , a respected landowner who has fallen on hard times. We saw how he tried to provide for his family - his wife and his kids despite him shifting the profession and working at the automobile club. We were also were introduced to Alku, the dictatorial manager that has been supervising the staffs in the Automobile Club which has grew quite a reputation as a pub, gambling den and entertainment outlets for the elitist and the british expats that seeking to spend their time and money there including the  puppet king placed by the british at that time, King Faruk. Too many characters were flushed out in the first 150 pages that makes you feel why is he here? And how is she relevant to the story? Of course at the end of the day, you can see the connection but it felt exhaustive at the final page of the book. The book is set in British-occupied Egypt on the eve of the 1952 revolution and we can see various of POVS offered by these characters on the event that led to the end of the Kingdom and the beginning of republic for the country. The author offers how the opinions was deeply divided following the classes and political affiliations but at the same time showed how the British did not want them to be liberated in the first place. Using the same sentiments of dehumanizing the locals as ‘lazy, uneducated and stubborn’, they refused to liberate Egyp and kept on clinging to their colonization agenda. The novel explored many themes that highlighted social and political unrest, corruption, and the impact of historical events on individuals and families BUT the book struggled to give a conclusive ending. Alaa Al-Aswany might have won me over with the Yacoubian building and friendly fire novels but this one is such a mess. I was invested with Kamel and Saleha story but that itself is not enough to grant this book 4 stars rating. I think this is the book that might be hit or miss among his fans, you might love it or you might hate it depending on how you read the book. I love the plot but i felt he is too ambitious to make so many characters with so many stories to weave them back together as the ending.