Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun: A Family Epic

by Marcel Bénabou, Steven Rendall, Warren Motte (Introduction)

English (translation)Original French

Genres: Nonfiction, Morocco

244 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1995

About the author

"Emeritus professor of Roman history at the Paris Diderot University, Marcel Bénabou's work focuses on ancient Rome, in particular North Africa during Antiquity and acculturation and romanisation processes at work in these provinces.

A member of the "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle" (or OuLiPo) since 1969, which he joined one year after his friend Georges Perec, the following year he became the definitively provisional secretary. Since 2003 he combines this function with that of provisionally definitive secretary.

His Oulipian works often focus on the genesis of literary work and autobiography.

He appears in the guise of the lawyer Hassan Ibn Abbou in the novel La Disparition by his friend Georges Perec."

Reviews

[Cynthia F Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book illuminates a lost world, in North Africa's multi-cultural Morocco, between the World wars. One could say that the author ended up in France, nostalgic for the land he'd left behind, but only because he'd been French educated, and had options.

Benabou's family were wanderers of the Jewish Diaspora, whose settlements seemed perpetually destined to be temporary, though their presence always contributed some progressive ingredient in the countries where they stay for a generation, or two or three or four.

Unfortunately I've loaned my copy so I cannot quote any of the passages but the author does justice to the family, era and vanished realm he remembers, from his lonely library in Paris as a professor of even more ancient history.