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BOOKS IN BRIEF FICTION My Torturess is the latest novel by Bensalem Himmich, Moroccan author and former Minister of Culture, to be translated by Roger Allen, who won the 2012 Saif Ghobash Banipal Arabic Literary Translation Prize for his Translation of Himmich’s A Muslim Suicide. A prolific and inventive author, Himmich weaves up-to-the-minute issues of extremism, corruption, courts, torture, rendition and suffering into a novel that is read with eyebrows almost continually raised in horror. The young bookseller Hamuda recounts in fast-moving detail how he was seized from his bookstore during Ramadan, drugged and helicoptered away to a single cell, falsely accused of being an extremist jihadist. He is hauled before a number of judges “for trials and examinations” and spends nearly six years in an unknown prison in an unknown country, suffering all manner of degradation and sexual depravity, interrogations – with his chief interrogator and debaucher a woman they call Mama Ghula (ghoul). All manner of cruelties are inflicted including mock executions, and he is drugged, raped, and brutally force-fed when he goes on hunger strike. Hamuda also appears to contract TB, and is forced to recite Qur’anic verses even though he is a devout Muslim. He takes part in a soirée- cum-nightclub for all prisoners, and other activities that seem so outrageous they might even have been imagined by the bookseller as he tries to deal with his life turned upside down, all the while being totally innocent. A skilful novelistic judgement on the CIA special renditions after 9/11, there are also occasional shades of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Translated by Roger Allen, Syracuse University Press, USA, April 2015. ISBN: 9780815610472, 225pp, Pbk, £18.50/ $19.95. M. Obank Najwa Barakt’s Oh, Salaam! is set in an unnamed Arab country and revolves around three men and their relationship with a woman named Salaam. The three 202 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015
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BOOKS IN BRIEF men have been involved in the civil war, Luqman as an explosives expert, Najeeb as a sniper and the Albino as a torturer, but only two of them survive. The Albino, Salaam’s fiancé, is killed during the war. Struggling to adjust to normal life once peace is established, Luqman and Najeeb’s lives become intertwined with Salaam’s in their search for love, wealth and better living conditions. The novel was published in Arabic in 1999 and translated into French and Italian in 2012. Olivia Snaije, who reviewed the French edition in Banipal 44 – 12 Women Writers, said about it: “Ya Salaam! is akin to a literary horror film – each character more unsavoury than the last, wielding power, corruption and violence with gusto. [. . .] Barakat does not offer any explanations, rather, she continues her search for the answer to what she describes as the constant question that torments her: how can ordinary people fall into the most absurd barbarity and violence?” Translated by Luke Leafgren, Interlink Books, USA, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-56656-992-7, 208pp, Pbk,£9.99/$15.00 Laura Ferreri Mansour Bushnaf’s Chewing Gum is a hilarious description of Libya’s history through a littered park, particularly symbolising the abuse of the country during Gaddafi’s dictatorship. The antihero of the story is being left by his girlfriend but remains standing in the park for a decade, hoping she will return. While some characters affected by the chewing gum craze go abroad to satisfy their needs, the girlfriend enters into various conspicuous enterprises to get hold of chewing gum. Among the characters entangled in a cobweb of people within Libya’s establishments is a Professor of Philosophy and expert on Sartre who concludes that the country has been afflicted by “a mania for the existential gum”. Everyone is chewing on something, whether gum or society issues. P.S. Libyans did smuggle chewing gum into the country when such commodities were condemned as Western commercialism. Translated by Mona Zaki. Darf Publishers, London, 2014. ISBN: 9781850772729, 125 pp, Pbk, £8.99. Aurora Tellenbach The Confines of the Shadow, Volume I: “In Lands Overseas” by Libyan author Alessandro Spina comprises the first three novels of his magnum opus recording the history of Libya from 1911 to 1964 – seven novels and four short story collections published in one volume BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015 203

BOOKS IN BRIEF

FICTION

My Torturess is the latest novel by Bensalem Himmich, Moroccan author and former Minister of Culture, to be translated by Roger Allen, who won the 2012 Saif Ghobash Banipal Arabic Literary Translation Prize for his Translation of Himmich’s A Muslim Suicide. A prolific and inventive author, Himmich weaves up-to-the-minute issues of extremism, corruption, courts, torture, rendition and suffering into a novel that is read with eyebrows almost continually raised in horror. The young bookseller Hamuda recounts in fast-moving detail how he was seized from his bookstore during Ramadan, drugged and helicoptered away to a single cell, falsely accused of being an extremist jihadist. He is hauled before a number of judges “for trials and examinations” and spends nearly six years in an unknown prison in an unknown country, suffering all manner of degradation and sexual depravity, interrogations – with his chief interrogator and debaucher a woman they call Mama Ghula (ghoul). All manner of cruelties are inflicted including mock executions, and he is drugged, raped, and brutally force-fed when he goes on hunger strike. Hamuda also appears to contract TB, and is forced to recite Qur’anic verses even though he is a devout Muslim. He takes part in a soirée-

cum-nightclub for all prisoners, and other activities that seem so outrageous they might even have been imagined by the bookseller as he tries to deal with his life turned upside down, all the while being totally innocent. A skilful novelistic judgement on the CIA special renditions after 9/11, there are also occasional shades of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Translated by Roger Allen, Syracuse University Press, USA, April 2015. ISBN: 9780815610472, 225pp, Pbk, £18.50/ $19.95. M. Obank

Najwa Barakt’s Oh, Salaam! is set in an unnamed Arab country and revolves around three men and their relationship with a woman named Salaam. The three

202 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015

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