THE LEMON

by Mohammed Mrabet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 1972

Another successful collaboration (Love with a Few Hair, 1968) by the North African and expatriate American novelist about a young Moroccan boy's progressive distillation of childhood's blanching innocence into a fierce, lonely freedom. Twelve year-old Abdeslam, irrevocably severed from his family by his father's renunciating blow when he refuses a teacher's humilation, runs away. He lives briefly with a welcoming Nazarene family, but must lead his own life, and goes to Tangiers. There he shares rooms with a heavy drinking longshoreman, Bachir, and is mothered by the prostitute Aouicha. But Abdeslam gradually becomes aware of adult impingements on his still vulnerable ego -- adults who would adopt him, preach to him or try to edge him from the life he has chosen, the kind of life, he knew, ""that always brings trouble with it."" And there are the more obvious threats of those who would use him to satisfy needs in their own crippled lives -- unhappy Aouicha and the homosexual Bachir. Increasingly cautious, Abdeslam makes his choices; he coolly pays his way with cafe jobs, smokes kif, and at the close walls off childhood forever, taking revenge upon Bachir's insults with a razor concealed in a lemon. Bowles has translated and edited Mrabet's pristine and explicit chronolog with stylistic grace -- there's not a line askew or unweighted. Moving and superbly crafted.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION