It’s a novel of sex, romance, power and religion.

And in a post-September 11 world looking for a window on the Middle East, it is significant that Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building is also a novel of Egypt that has just been translated into English.

Increasingly, writers, readers and publishers are turning to literature as a bridge between cultures, particularly Western and Arab societies estranged since Muslim extremists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Recent years have seen the arrival of a Web site devoted to translating fiction and new grants for literary translations. Last year, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest of its kind in the world, chose the Arab world as its “guest of honor,” giving several hundred Arab writers and intellectuals an unprecedented chance to exchange ideas with their Western counterparts and meet publishers and agents.

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