About Alaa al-Aswany Alaa al-Aswany (Arabic: علاء الأسواني‎),Egyptain Arabic(Masri) "علاء الاسوانى" (born 1957) is an Egyptian writer, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya.Life and works Trained as a dentist in Egypt and Chicago, it took him 9 years to earn his degree from Chicago National Universtiy where he spent 17 years in his life, el-Aswany has contributed numerous articles to Egyptian newspapers on literature, politics, and social issues. His second novel, The Yacoubian Building, an ironic depiction of modern Egyptian society, has been widely read in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. It has been translated into English, Finnish, French, Norwegian, Greek and Dutch, and was adapted into a film (2006) and a television series (2007) of the same name. Chicago, a novel set in the city in which the author was educated, was published in January 2007. Al-Aswany participated in the Blue Metropolis in Montreal, June 2008, and was featured in interviews with the CBC programme "Writers and Company"