Description
Book SynopsisBoualem Yekker, a bookstore owner lives in a country being overtaken by the Vigilant Brothers, a radically conservative party that seeks to control every element of life according to the laws of their stringent moral theology: no work of beauty created by human hands should rival the wonders of their god.
Trade Review“
The Last Summer of Reason has acquired a new and haunting immediacy since the attacks of September 11. . . . Deftly translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager, and with a foreword by Wole Soyinka, the novel provides an anguished dispatch from what nearly became Algeria’s future. . . . An elegiac ode to literature and a furious protest against intolerance.”—Adam Shatz,
New York Times“One is reminded of how life-affirming and dangerous literature still can be.”—
Minneapolis Star Tribune"
The Last Summer of Reason provides a powerful and strangely beautiful reminder of the danger of letting violent ideological fundamentalism fester. We would do well to heed this reminder now, not later."—Jennifer Bryson,
Public DiscourseTable of ContentsIntroductionForewordSermon 1The Vigilant BrothersWhen will the quake happen?The summer when time stoppedPilgrim of the new timesThe Good whose substance the Almighty establishedThe nocturnal tribunalThe binding textA dream shaped like madnessThe future is a closed doorThe message suppressedFor that we will live, for that we will die...Therapists of the spiritOne should come from nowhereThe unknown arbiterBorn to have a bodyDoes death make noise as it moves?
