Truth be told, after a deep attachment to Algerian literature, I simply felt like peeking at the neighbors to see how they fare in translation. I could say that my tendency to focus on a country is how the construction of this list began, but that would be a sticky fib. It’s an approach to fiction I always found odd and enjoyable there is a special kind of enjoyment to be had by sticking to the fiction of a place and concentrating on it for a while. Many readers and bookshops organize their book piles, shelves, and readings by country, loosely defined as the author’s country of origin, or else by where the story takes place. Film adaptation is a distinct possibility, especially given the book's publisher.ArabLit Editor Nadia Ghanem surveys the twentieth- and twenty-first century Moroccan literature available in English:īy Nadia Ghanem From the Casablanca International Book Fair.
(Apr.) Forecast: A bestseller in France, where Morocco is always a hot issue, this oddly gripping book should also do well here thanks to Oufkir's appearance soon on 60 Minutes and a five-city tour. Beyond horrifying images such as mice nibbling at a rich girl's face, this erstwhile princess's memoir will fascinate readers with its singular tale of two kindly fathers, political struggles in a strict monarchy and a family's survival of cruel, prolonged deprivation. In fact, she was the adopted daughter of King Muhammad V, Hassan II's father, sent by her parents at age five to be raised in the court with the king's daughter as her companion and equal. Oufkir's experience does not fit easily into current perceptions of political prisoners victimized for their beliefs or actions. Recapture led to another five years of various forms of imprisonment before the family was finally granted freedom. Finally, starving and suicidal, the innocents realized they had been left to die. Over the years, subsequent placements brought isolation cells and inadequate, vermin-infested rations.
At their first posting, they complained that they were short on butter and sweets. After her father's execution, Oufkir, her mother and five siblings were carted off to a series of desert barracks, along with their books, toys and French designer clothes in the family's Vuitton luggage. Here, Oufkir tells of the 20-year imprisonment of her upper-class Moroccan family following a 1972 coup attempt against King Hassan II by her father, a close military aide. While accounts of the unjust arrest and torture of political prisoners are by now common, we expect such victims to come with a just cause.
0 kommentar(er)
