شيكاجو

Kill it with fire.

The only redeemable quality is the smoothness of the writing (albeit slightly repetitive) and the world building (the world he built seemed to be solid, and stable). However, there were too many characters, it was hard to keep up with them all. I was still unable to remember a character by name the last 20 pages of the book. Some chapters ended on semi cliff hangers and we didn't reunite with the character in question for another 70-80 pages which is about 20% of the book so it is very unreasonable. Also, there were a lot of side stories for some very unimportant characters that I don't think were relevant at all to spend so much time on. Very little character development from start to finish, if at all, and too many sex scenes that SHOULD have been spent on character development instead. Each character seems to have one trait that carried it through from start to finish because of so little space to develop it with an abundance of sex scenes in between that the author seemed to be... sex obsessed? I understand how for an Arab, writing such raunchy and detailed sex scenes can seem like the ultimate defiance in writing, especially since it is published in Arabic, in an Arab country, but not only was it tacky, it was bordering on being vulgar since at least 70% was irrelevant to the story and the characters ended up appearing juvenile because of how mono-dimensional they were in sacrifice for the trivial sex scenes.
Also, it was weird how some people were only described by their race in relation to menial jobs they occupied when no other feature about them was described at all (not even what they are wearing, or their attitude, or the face expression)... it was just odd... and robbed me the wrong way. This is not a work of literature (far from being one in Arabic at all as the language is way too simple, expressions and descriptions repetitive, and storyline non memorable or revolutionary) for the connection between low wage job (receptionist and drivers were always black for example and no other feature about them mentioned) and race be of any critical importance to the work as a whole, and it shouldn't be, as the story primarily follows a bunch of Egyptians in relation to their society back home, the estrangement and cultural shock in America and their relationship with the Egyptian dictatorship.
Also, the story had no clear direction, nor did any of the mini stories of the people within, the ending feels cut off, there is no clear resolution at the end, the story felt incredibly stagnant for around 300 pages, and it was very hard to go through it despite the smooth writing because it was so static and I could not see any direction for it to go in.