Alaa Al Aswany's previous novel, the bestselling The Yacoubian Building, offered a slice of Egyptian life by peering into a Cairo apartment block to examine the lives of its inhabitants. Chicago adopts the same soap-opera-influenced format, but transplants it to America (where Al Aswany himself studied dentistry in the 1980s). Here the story strands - comic, tragic - are provided by Egyptians studying and teaching at the University of Illinois medical centre.

Although the novel is set in a post-9/11 America, 9/11 itself is barely mentioned beyond references to Egyptian characters' experiences at airport security. Perhaps because he has a deeper and first-hand experience of the issues at stake, Al Aswany is much less prone to grandstanding pronouncements on the so-called “Clash of Civilisations” than some of his western counterparts. Instead, he examines with warmth, wit and psychological acuity the way in which exile throws a spotlight on the Egyptianness of his characters. The specifically American strands (especially the story of an ageing 1960s radical and his younger black girlfriend) are its weakest links. Chicago is above all a book about Egypt.

As such it is quite brilliant, and should be required reading for the hundreds of thousands of British tourists who step off the plane to soak up sun and ancient history without knowing what goes on under the surface of that deeply troubled and unhappy country. An Egyptian once remarked to me that his countrymen were the British of the Arab world, because they had the worst cooking but the best sense of humour.

Even when exploring the darkest aspects of Egyptian life (the political corruption and authoritarianism, the use of torture) Al Aswany's lightness of touch never deserts him. Ahmad Danana, the head of the Egyptian Students' Union and a government stooge who lords it over his peers, is both funny and monstrous as he veers between a pompous, Koran-quoting brutality with his new wife and a cringing servility with his boss in the security services.

The attempt by these two to prevent an embarrassing protest on the occasion of a visit to Chicago by the Egyptian president forms the one unifying thread. For the most part the book is open-ended, revelling in the diverse paths its characters take. There is Shaymaa, who combines scientific brilliance with peasant naivety, suffering agonies of conscience over her dealings with her first boyfriend, a fellow lonely Egyptian who is undergoing his own awakening from a life of masturbation and misogyny. Al Alswany maps the shifting sands of their relationship with grace, delicacy and sexual frankness, contriving for them the most bittersweet ending imaginable. There is Karam Doss, a Coptic Christian who fled discrimination in Egypt and set his sights single-mindedly on becoming a surgeon in the New World. And, most movingly there is Dr Salah, who sees the forthcoming presidential visit as his moment of truth, his chance to atone for a moment of cowardice on the streets of Cairo 30 years before.

Chicago seems destined to repeat the success of The Yacoubian Building. With his vivid characters, warm humour and short, snappy scenes, Al Aswany is like an Egyptian Anne Tyler. A Hollywood film of Chicago would not seem out of the question - were it not for the downbeat ending. For just when things seem to be moving towards a fairy-tale conclusion, Al Aswany throws a huge, cold bucket of realism over the narrative. It speaks much for his integrity, and makes Chicago an incomparably richer and stronger novel. But it may not endear him to Tinseltown.

Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
Fourth Estate £14.99 pp332

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