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THE LAST SUMMER OF REASON

Though these and other bleak reflections on fundamentalist society remain as legacy, the stilling of Djaout’s humanist voice...

Prize-winning novelist and poet Djaout was assassinated in 1993 by Islamic fundamentalists in his native Algeria, leaving this very short novel, a painful rumination on the death of the spirit in a repressive society, among his papers.

Boualem has already suffered much under the new theocratic regime of his stricken homeland, something he knows only too well even as he drives along the sea hoping that a member of the ruling Vigilant Brothers won’t pull him over for some impious infraction. A bookseller, he has had to allow the offerings in his store to be removed from public view, and he’s seen his clientele dwindle to a determined but furtive single customer. A devoted family man, he also has had to accept the defection of his wife and grown children, who are more willing than he is to embrace the new national order and its offers of temporal and everlasting rewards. But in spite of these blows to his sense of identity, Boualem persists, believing that his passive defense of the material contained in his books is necessary to keep hope for change alive. Even when he is cursed and stoned by children in the neighborhood, he carries on, consoling himself with his reading and with remembrances of his own children in happier times. The arrival of a threatening letter, however, marks a tightening of the noose around him. Followed swiftly by even more threatening phone calls, Boualem receives the final blow when he goes to his store one day and finds that it and its contents have been confiscated. He can do nothing now but ponder his future—without consolation.

Though these and other bleak reflections on fundamentalist society remain as legacy, the stilling of Djaout’s humanist voice is a loss to the larger literary world as much as to his embattled homeland.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-886913-50-1

Page Count: 160

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001

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THE TESTAMENTS

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

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Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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THINGS FALL APART

This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.

Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.

Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.

Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958

ISBN: 0385474547

Page Count: 207

Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky

Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958

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