Search results for ""Author Habib Selmi""

This novel from one of Tunisia’s leading writers, the first of his works to be translated into English, narrates a love story in all its stages, in all its glorious and inglorious details. Moment by moment we become acquainted with the morning rituals, the desires of the flesh, the turbulence of the spirit, and even a few unattractive personal habits. It is a journey that takes us inside the nuances of what passes between two lovers, from the first glances of attraction to the final words of anger. It is a journey filled with all the hallmarks of the complex relationship between one man and one woman‹the mystery and the ambiguity, the intricacy and the confusion‹which, in the end, serve to expose its fragility. This is an intimate tale that manages to tell not only the story of two individuals, but also that of the collision of two cultures.

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In Goat Mountain, Habib Selmi’s first novel, published in Arabic in 1988, a young man’s journey begins in a dilapidated old bus that takes four hours to reach Al-‘Ala, from where he takes a long ride on mule back, accompanied by a mysterious older man who is to play an important part in the young man’s new life. They finally arrive at Goat Mountain, a forlorn, Tunisian desert village. The school is a single room. The youth passes the first night in the house of his uncommunicative guide, whose name is Ismail . . . He grows more uneasy and depressed as Ismail becomes ever more powerful until, with a new truck and his own private army, Ismail dominates village life and casts a menacing shadow over the young man.

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