THE SACRED NIGHT

by Tahar Ben Jelloun ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 18, 1989

Ahmed is the sole male heir of his dying father. Yet in this brief, evocative, fantastical-poetic novel by Moroccan-French writer Ben Jelloun (sequel to The Sand Child and winner of the 1987 Prix Goncourt), the father's last permission is for Ahmed to turn into Zahra--to become the woman that the boy has always wanted to be. And woman he becomes--actually--to wander, to suffer rape, and eventually to wind up in a house shared by a blind man--the Consul--and his repulsive and horrifyingly symbiotic sister. Zahra's role in the household is to provide for the brother the choicest prostitutes to slake his physical needs. Sexual vicariousness is the spirit of the strange m‚nage, but Zahra eventually becomes the blind man's lover without telling him so. In the end, there is a violent catharsis that seems inevitable considering all the other transformative states already reached. Ben Jelloun's prose (in translator Sheridan's English version) is stately, lucid, and flexibly incantatory--it calls up improbabilities amid twilight states of being. Intriguing allegorical work.

Pub Date: July 18, 1989

ISBN: 0801864410

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION