An examination of Alāʽ al-Aswānī's "The Yacoubian Building" novel in the context of sociology of literature

The novel The Yacoubian Building, written in 2002 by Alāʽ al-Aswānī, one of the socialist realist writers of modern Egyptian literature, has become his most popular work. In terms of its subject matter, the novel emphasises the social realities of Egypt after the 1952 Revolution, which underwent great corruption with the ideological and institutional restructuring. The novel The Yacoubian Building is written in a brave and critical language about the moral and social degeneration that took place in Egyptian society in the 1990s under the shadow of the political atmosphere. ʽAlāʽ al-Aswānī, while addressing the daily life of the residents of the apartment building, which had been the residence of wealthy businessmen and noble families of different ethnic and religious origins before the revolution, changed with the migration of its first inhabitants from the Yakubian Apartment, used this apartment building as a symbolic place that hosts people from different strata in his novel. It is possible to say that Yakoubian Apartment is a miniature of the Egyptian society during the 1990 Gulf War years because it accommodates a whole Egyptian people in one apartment. This study aims to examine the social structure through the novel The Yacoubian Building, which deals with the 90s in a multifaceted way, and to analyse it in the context of literary sociology. In the first part of the study, the concept of sociology of literature, which is the method of the research, is discussed methodically. In this section, the relationship between literature and society is explained and the method of sociology of literature is given. In the second part of the study, ʽAlāʽ al-Aswānī's life and writing career are mentioned, followed by information about the novel The Yacoubian Building. In the third part, on the occasion of this novel, which sheds light on Egyptian society, the social alienation, corruption, and distortion that emerged with the changing order of Egyptian society after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution are examined in accordance with the methodology of literary sociology. Analyses have been made on the historical background of the period and the social transformations and social contradictions of the society. The mutual bond between literature and society has been determined, and it has been concluded that society influences and moulds literature and literature influences and moulds society.