The Yacoubian Building

Not the medieval alleys of Islamic Cairo but the European-built downtown of the 1930s, Wust el-Balad: Art Deco blocks, cafes and bars around Talaat Harb and Kasr El Nil, a whole society stacked inside one apartment house from the ground-floor offices to the iron huts on the roof. The map keeps to a few downtown streets, all real, all within a short walk of Talaat Harb Square.

Zaki Bey el Dessouki

The Yacoubian Building, Talaat Harb Street

Opening

A 1930s apartment house downtown becomes the whole cast's shared address, its floors sorted by class: European-style flats below, a ground-floor office where the ageing playboy Zaki Bey still receives visitors, and the poor pressed onto the roof. Al Aswany borrowed the name and the location from a real block that still stands on Talaat Harb Street.

Opening chapter

inspired by The novel's building is a fictional cross-section of Egyptian society, but Al Aswany named it after and placed it on the street of a real 1937 Art Deco block at 34 Talaat Harb Street, where his own father once kept an office. Sited at the real building.

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