Title:
The sand child
Author:
Added Author:
Edition:
Johns Hopkins pbk. ed.
Publication Date:
2000
Publication Information:
Baltimore, Maryland ; London : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Physical Description:
vi, 165 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN:
9780801864407
Abstract:
In this lyrical, hallucinatory novel set in Morocco, Tahar Ben Jelloun offers an imaginative and radical critique of contemporary Arab social customs and Islamic law. The Sand Child tells the story of a Moroccan father's effort to thwart the consequences of Islam's inheritance laws regarding female offspring. Already the father of seven daughters, Hajji Ahmed determines that his eighth child will be a male. Accordingly, the infant, a girl, is named Mohammed Ahmed and raised as a young man with all the privileges granted exclusively to men in traditional Arab-Islamic societies. As she matures, however, Ahmed's desire to have children marks the beginning of her sexual evolution, and as a woman named Zahra, Ahmed begins to explore her true sexual identity. Drawing on the rich Arabic oral tradition, Ben Jelloun relates the extraordinary events of Ahmed's life through a professional storyteller and the listeners who have gathered in a Marrakesh market square in the 1950s to hear his tale.
General Note:
"[Enfant de sable] Copyright ©1985 by Editions de Seuil. English translation copyright ©1987 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc."--Title page verso.
Contents:
The man -- The Thursday gate -- The Friday gate -- The Saturday gate -- Bab El had -- The forgotten gate -- The walled-up gate -- The houseless woman -- "Construct a face as one construct a house" -- The storyteller devoured by his words -- The man with a woman's breast -- The woman with the badly shaven beard -- A night without escape -- Salem -- Amar -- Fatuma -- The blind troubadour -- The Andalusian night -- The gate of the sands.
Geographic Term:
Genre:
Language:
English
Additional Language:
Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan.
