Book of the Month

Get Involved with Our Book of the Month!

Each month, we’ll pick a novel we think you’ll love - something gripping, uplifting, thought-provoking, funny, or maybe even all of the above!

Whether you’re hooked from the first page or still making up your mind, you’ll have the chance to share your thoughts with other readers. Our Book of the Month group meets on the first Monday of every month in a friendly and welcoming library atmosphere.

It’s the perfect way to discover books you might not have chosen yourself and enjoy some lively, thoughtful conversations!

Our Book of the Month for August is The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany.

Copies are available in the library and we are going to discuss this book in our next meeting on 4 August at 4.30 pm.

About the book:

Exuberant and powerfully moving, The Automobile Club of Egypt is an essential work of social criticism from one of the Arab world's greatest literary voices.

Inside the walls of the Automobile Club of Egypt two very different worlds collide - Cairo's European elite and the Egyptian staff who wait on them. The servants, a squabbling, humorous and deeply human group, live in a perpetual state of fear under the tyrannical rule of Alku. When Abd el-Aziz Gaafar becomes the target of Alku's cruelty and his pride gets the better of him, a devastating act sends ripples through his family. Soon, they too are drawn into the turbulent politics of the club, as servants and masters are subsumed by Egypt's social upheaval. Egyptians both inside and outside the club are about to face a stark choice: to live safely without dignity, or fight for their rights and risk everything.

About the author:

Alaa Al Aswany is an Egyptian writer, novelist, dentist and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya. He is based in Paris and New York where lives and teaches creative writing.