In his sixth novel to be published into English, Abdellah Taïa explores the dissonance of one man’s homecoming marred by the memory of his tragic past and grief-filled present.
Upon his mother's death, Youssef—a Moroccan teacher who has lived in exile in France for a quarter of a century—returns to his hometown, Salé, at his sisters' request to settle the family estate.
In Salé, voices from Youssef’s past reemerge, including that of Najib, his childhood friend and lover whose tragic fate saw him consumed by drug trafficking and corrupted as a colonel in King Hassan II’s army. As Youssef wanders the Salé streets and alleyways, a world he left behind begins to take shape again, filled with poverty, hypocrisy, and violence against people who are marginalized. While the old city ramparts cast a long shadow over his story, Youssef confronts his childhood, recalls his young loves, and, in many ways, reconnects with his late mother.
In 1973, ABDELLAH TAÏA was born in the public library of Rabat in Morocco, where his father was the janitor and where his family lived until he was two years old. Acclaimed as both a novelist and filmmaker, he writes in French and has published eight books now widely translated, including Le jour de roi, which was awarded the prestigious French Prix de Flore in 2010. An adaptation of his novel L'Armée du salut was his first feature film, released in 2014, screened at major festivals around the world, and hailed by the New York Times as giving "the Arab world its first on-screen gay protagonist." Abdellah Taïa made history in 2006 by coming out in his country, where homosexuality is illegal. His commitment to the defense of homosexuals in Muslim countries has made him one of the most prominent Arab writers of his generation—both "a literary transgressor and cultural paragon," according to Interview magazine. Taia has lived in Paris since 1998.
EMMA RAMADAN is an educator and literary translator of all genres from French, with a focus on undersung women novelists, experimental literature, and writers from the Arab world. She is the recipient of the 2021 PEN Translation Prize, the 2018 Albertine Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Sphinx, Not One Day, and In Concrete by Anne Garréta; A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa; Zabor, or the Psalms by Kamel Daoud; co-translations with Olivia Baes of The Easy Life and Me & Other Writing by Marguerite Duras; and Panics by Barbara Molinard. Her translations of Lamia Ziadé ’s Mon port de Beyrouth and Ma très grande mélancolie arabe are forthcoming from Pluto Press.
