Five of the best brainy beach reads

Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels American Wife, Prep, and The Man of My Dreams. Her new novel is Sisterland.

For the Wall Street Journal, Sittenfeld named "five beach reads that are devour-able without being dismissible," including:

The Yacoubian Building
Alaa Al Aswany (2006)

More than a dozen characters living in the same Cairo building fight, fall in love, sleep together and betray one another in this soap-operatic saga. A major cultural phenomenon and a controversy in the author's home country, this was the best-selling Arabic language book of 2002 and 2003.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Yacoubian Building is one of Humphrey Davies's five top works of contemporary Egyptian fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue