But while Chicago picks up where The -Yacoubian Building left off in its indictment of modern Egypt, it is an altogether less -uplifting read. This is an account of flight from Egypt that does not lead to The Promised Land.

When we first meet most of our exiles, they are either successful doctors and academics, or students en route to professional success. As the novel develops, however, we see how these exiles are trapped in relationships that have lost their enchantment. America's promise has become tainted, and the forces that sowed unhappiness in Middlemarch - a hopelessly idealistic attitude towards love, an idealism that takes insufficient account of human frailty, an inability to -escape mistakes from long ago - all ensnare the characters.

In different ways, all the central characters are left feeling somehow diminished and guilty for having let Egypt down by abandoning it. The theme of abandonment, of responsibilities towards others improperly discharged, of ambition overtaking altruism, permeates the latter half of the book. But instead of these disappointments being rendered in a subtle, nuanced and controlled fashion, there is a tendency towards brutal melodrama in the final third of the book, which is overdone. It's a departure from realism which actually diminishes the force of the work.