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L'Etrange Affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine
Un haut fonctionnaire marocain, envoyé à Bruxelles, se retrouve mortifié quand son unique pantalon lui est dérobé. C'est sanglé dans une défroque digne de celle d'un clown qu'il se présente devant la Commission européenne ...
Un jeune homme faisant une demande de passeport s'aperçoit que, pour l'administration, son village natal n'existe pas. Par conséquent, n'étant jamais né, il est inconnu au bataillon...
Avec un humour décapant et un rythme endiablé, Fouad Laroui nous conduit à l'irrépressible éclat de rire devant l'absurdité de la condition humaine.
Un jeune homme faisant une demande de passeport s'aperçoit que, pour l'administration, son village natal n'existe pas. Par conséquent, n'étant jamais né, il est inconnu au bataillon...
Avec un humour décapant et un rythme endiablé, Fouad Laroui nous conduit à l'irrépressible éclat de rire devant l'absurdité de la condition humaine.
144 pages, Pocket Book
First published October 18, 2012
22 people are currently reading
786 people want to read
About the author
Fouad Laroui
52 books107 followersFouad Laroui est né au Maroc, mais il vit en Europe depuis l'âge de vingt ans. Il a fait ses études supérieures en France. Installé aujourd'hui à Amsterdam, il y enseigne l'économie et les sciences de l'environnement.
(Fouad Laroui's radio show) http://www.medi1.com/redaction/points...
Il a reçu en 2013 le prix Goncourt de la nouvelle pour "L’Étrange Affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine"
(Fouad Laroui's radio show) http://www.medi1.com/redaction/points...
Il a reçu en 2013 le prix Goncourt de la nouvelle pour "L’Étrange Affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine"
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
February 6, 2017
Really liked this collection of stories.
They are funny and absurd, with a bite. I felt some echoes of the Turkish writer Aziz Nesin, maybe Cossery, and maybe even a bit of Hodja Nasreddin, although I’m sure there are closer Moroccan antecedents.
Fouad is by first profession a professor of economics and econometrics, and in a couple of stories a bit of science lends the illusion of a foundation to a semi-surreal situation. For example, it lends false technical grounding to the flight of fancy in which the staff of a school without a swimming pool, required to offer a swimming test as part of the baccalaureate requirements, debates whether its workaround of making swimming motions on grass or sand is more consistent with fluid dynamics theory.
The book feels very much part of a storyteller’s culture. Many of the stories are spun as one of several men sitting in a coffee shop entertains his friends a tale of an absent friend. Some end with a laugh, others reveal potential fractures in a complex society. An easy book to carry around to have a story to read in interludes during the day, but its observations on class and the State will stick with you.
They are funny and absurd, with a bite. I felt some echoes of the Turkish writer Aziz Nesin, maybe Cossery, and maybe even a bit of Hodja Nasreddin, although I’m sure there are closer Moroccan antecedents.
Fouad is by first profession a professor of economics and econometrics, and in a couple of stories a bit of science lends the illusion of a foundation to a semi-surreal situation. For example, it lends false technical grounding to the flight of fancy in which the staff of a school without a swimming pool, required to offer a swimming test as part of the baccalaureate requirements, debates whether its workaround of making swimming motions on grass or sand is more consistent with fluid dynamics theory.
The book feels very much part of a storyteller’s culture. Many of the stories are spun as one of several men sitting in a coffee shop entertains his friends a tale of an absent friend. Some end with a laugh, others reveal potential fractures in a complex society. An easy book to carry around to have a story to read in interludes during the day, but its observations on class and the State will stick with you.
January 30, 2019
I had a lot of fun reading these stories. The titular story comes first and was a romp of a farce but it also said a lot about that peculiar experience of visiting a foreign country, and finding yourself surrounded by foreign people who act strangely, except they're not strange at all, that's you, you're the foreigner. Other stories are more surreal and disturbing. I took my time reading these and enjoyed the collection very much that way, as something that I could dip into when I didn't know what to read next, and know that I would always be surprised.
March 13, 2017
Brilliant writing and (from what i could tell) remarkable translating. A Moroccan who writes in French, Laroui walks the fine line between what could be excruciating, especially in a country too close, temporally and geographically to its colonial oppressor to really escape the residua that seems to squeeze out awkwardly & unbidden: (”..her first husband, who was French and thus handsome and rich.”). But he is hilarious. One moment i’m cringing and the next giggling. My only complaint is that this is a book of short stories, and short stories are always, well, too short. Fortunately, there is a novel being translated rumoured to come out this year.
There is great variety in the stories but much of the humor is found in the irony of prejudice. My favorite was the first piece (Dassoukine’s Trousers) closely followed by several others including the Bodyguard which was a class-based comic tragedy - leaving me somehow not feeling tragic, at all.
But it seems with most everything i am drawn to read of late, there is life among the unfamiliar, bigotry, new words, mixed identities.
From Dislocation:
“and if some people believe they are at home, in this tiny particle of dust in an unlimited universe in a tiny corner of a speck, and others are invited here…”
And the end to a marvelous story about a man born nowhere (on purpose):
“...fleeing from the immense flood of identity problems seemingly trying to submerge the world and its inhabitants, and we strongly suspect, as we gallop, that these problems are not any more real than those of the native-torn citizen of Khzazna.”
of which there are, basically, none.
Highly recommended! (or Laroui in a story: ”an abundance of ! “ )
There is great variety in the stories but much of the humor is found in the irony of prejudice. My favorite was the first piece (Dassoukine’s Trousers) closely followed by several others including the Bodyguard which was a class-based comic tragedy - leaving me somehow not feeling tragic, at all.
But it seems with most everything i am drawn to read of late, there is life among the unfamiliar, bigotry, new words, mixed identities.
From Dislocation:
“and if some people believe they are at home, in this tiny particle of dust in an unlimited universe in a tiny corner of a speck, and others are invited here…”
And the end to a marvelous story about a man born nowhere (on purpose):
“...fleeing from the immense flood of identity problems seemingly trying to submerge the world and its inhabitants, and we strongly suspect, as we gallop, that these problems are not any more real than those of the native-torn citizen of Khzazna.”
of which there are, basically, none.
Highly recommended! (or Laroui in a story: ”an abundance of ! “ )
June 28, 2015
Two very distinct types of short stories in this book. The Moroccan tales told by groups of friends around a table in a cafe are full of humour, interruptions, interjections, digressions and tender absurdity. Then there are the more global tales of displacement, of identity, of wondering about origins and the possibility of corss-cultural understanding.
Perhaps not all equally memorable, but a fine collection of stories, thought-provoking and amusing.
Perhaps not all equally memorable, but a fine collection of stories, thought-provoking and amusing.
April 4, 2021
3.5 stars.
I’m cold, he said to himself sometimes with bitter irony, I’m cold and I eat tasteless things, but at least I’ve learned German, the language of the philosophers, and now I know the exact meaning of aufheben. We were so impressed by them, the Althussers and the consorts, the Derridas, the Glucksmanns, in Paris, when they threw out words like that one, without translating them, as if they were using an abracadabra that only they could access.
My favourite short story is Dislocation, brilliantly realised and going right to the bottom of the identity question. The first half of the book is hilarious, so funny. The second more philosophical and introspective, but there are always some parts bordering on the absurd. Clever.
I’m cold, he said to himself sometimes with bitter irony, I’m cold and I eat tasteless things, but at least I’ve learned German, the language of the philosophers, and now I know the exact meaning of aufheben. We were so impressed by them, the Althussers and the consorts, the Derridas, the Glucksmanns, in Paris, when they threw out words like that one, without translating them, as if they were using an abracadabra that only they could access.
My favourite short story is Dislocation, brilliantly realised and going right to the bottom of the identity question. The first half of the book is hilarious, so funny. The second more philosophical and introspective, but there are always some parts bordering on the absurd. Clever.
April 2, 2021
I really enjoyed this short story collection set in a number of locations - Morocco, Brussels, Utrecht, Paris. There is a lot of comedy linked to some astute observations of society in these settings. Highly recommend it.
January 13, 2021
To be more precise 4.11
#invisiblecities project
#invisiblecities project
May 6, 2021
A collection of short stories. A few are great, some are ok and many are just a complete waste of ink, paper and time. It reads like a the inner monologue of an intellectual on a Sunday morning as mean of a weekly workout.
Laroui has this very peculiar writing style in which he jam-packs a lot of ideas into interrogative sentences, unfinished phrases, and parenthesis (he even puts parenthesis inside parenthesis).
It's basically a writer's scrapbook sold for money.
Laroui has this very peculiar writing style in which he jam-packs a lot of ideas into interrogative sentences, unfinished phrases, and parenthesis (he even puts parenthesis inside parenthesis).
It's basically a writer's scrapbook sold for money.
January 28, 2021
This collection of shorts was unexpected and delightful while delivering social commentary in precisely the way I love. Laroui’s wry humour, his characters’ occasional tangents and the tension — whether antagonistic or playful — in the interactions between characters all really worked for me. I will definitely be reading more from this new-to-me author.
#InvisibleCitiesProject
#InvisibleCitiesProject
August 1, 2016
Super funny, super good, super poignant, super timely, super damn amazing.
January 13, 2018
It has its moments, but for all its (many, many) pretensions the ultimate takeaway seems to be "Language! It's funny. Ha!" If it were any longer I probably would have stopped reading.
September 30, 2025
The title story is the reason to seek this book out. It’s very amusing in a sort of César Aira type way; off-the-wall, crazy, impossible to predict where it will go.
Some of the other stories probably need more of a knowledge of Moroccan affairs than I have, u found them more complicated to understand, and for that reason, less humorous.
Laroui is very good in infusing the local culture into his storytelling.
In that first and title story, a Moroccan government minister has most of his money and his pants stolen on the way to a meeting with European ministers in Brussels to negotiate the purchase of flour for his country that has suffered a drought. He manages to buy a secondhand pair of faded “golf trousers, the work of a mad tailor, the trappings of a clown”.
Despite almost everything working against him, and with great hilarity, especially in a section about mistaken identity, he succeeds in getting the flour. There is, apparently, ‘an emergency stock for such desperate cases like Somalia and Chad, and other countries where their ministers dress in rags’.
He is to return to a lavish reception at Rabat airport as he has saved his country so much money, at which he utters the wonderful line… ‘It’s really my trousers they should be honouring’.
It’s one of the great short stories.
Some of the other stories probably need more of a knowledge of Moroccan affairs than I have, u found them more complicated to understand, and for that reason, less humorous.
Laroui is very good in infusing the local culture into his storytelling.
In that first and title story, a Moroccan government minister has most of his money and his pants stolen on the way to a meeting with European ministers in Brussels to negotiate the purchase of flour for his country that has suffered a drought. He manages to buy a secondhand pair of faded “golf trousers, the work of a mad tailor, the trappings of a clown”.
Despite almost everything working against him, and with great hilarity, especially in a section about mistaken identity, he succeeds in getting the flour. There is, apparently, ‘an emergency stock for such desperate cases like Somalia and Chad, and other countries where their ministers dress in rags’.
He is to return to a lavish reception at Rabat airport as he has saved his country so much money, at which he utters the wonderful line… ‘It’s really my trousers they should be honouring’.
It’s one of the great short stories.
March 29, 2021
Joli recueil de comptes, agréables à lire et bien originaux. J'ai bien aimé ces histoires parfois absurdes, souvent drôles, et bien écrites.
March 13, 2021
This collection contains nine stories four of which are loosely tied as they are set in or include mention of a certain "Café de l'Universe". This café is the meeting point of a group of (probably) male friends taking turns recounting rather hillarious events that happened either to themselves or to their acquaintances and which are shockingly absurd, the absurdity often being the result of an underlying authoritarian system.
Another set of stories is focussed on cross cultural love relationships entailing displacement for at least one partner which also means having to settle not only in a new place but also in a new language. These stories have a more serious tone.
The translation from French into English was well done by Emma Ramadan. This collection was my first Fouad Laroui but will definitely not be my last!!
Another set of stories is focussed on cross cultural love relationships entailing displacement for at least one partner which also means having to settle not only in a new place but also in a new language. These stories have a more serious tone.
The translation from French into English was well done by Emma Ramadan. This collection was my first Fouad Laroui but will definitely not be my last!!
July 5, 2016
I received an ARC from the publisher via Edelweiss.
This book contains a series of short stories told by a group of men sitting around at café in Morocco. It appears that they have been friends for quite some time as there is a lot of teasing, interrupting, and jocularity mixed in with their stories. Their tales range from the funny to the rather serious and I found that the theme of being an outsider in a foreign land pervades the entire collection.
The funniest tale is the title story in which a man is sent to Belgium by the Moroccan government to make a very important deal to import grain to his starving country. The man checks into a hotel and is very nervous that the fate of his country hangs on his ability to negotiate this most important deal. Since he is only visiting for one day he packs lightly and brings a single pair of nice trousers. He is awakened during his first night in his hotel room by a horrible noise and gets out of bed to find that an intruder has come through his window. At first glance it seems that nothing valuable has been stolen from him; but further inspection by the light of day reveals that his pants, his only pair of nice pants have been taken!
The man absolutely panics and goes does to the front desk of the hotel in his pajamas to ask for help. The clerk directs the man to a charity shop which has a single pair of pants that are just his size; but the pants are a ridiculous pair of golf pants. The events of his meeting, while he is wearing these pants, are hilarious but everything does work out for the best for him and for the fate of Morocco.
By contrast, there are two rather serious stories that I would like to describe from the collection. The first one, entitled “Dislocation,” is particularly fitting for what is going on in the world as far as refugees seeking asylum and people displaying xenophobia to anyone who seems foreign. I found his use of repeating the same lines in the story very Homeric but instead of repeating epithets he repeats the entire beginning lines of his story over and over again. Each time he repeats his story he begins with the phrase, “What would it be like, he asked himself, a world where everything was foreign?” Each time he repeats these lines he adds more details about his life. We discover that the man does, in fact, feel like a foreigner because he is a Moroccan who feels more French than Moroccan and is living in The Netherlands. He is treated as a foreigner, an outsider and his walk home becomes slower and slower as he contemplates his feeling of dislocation. This story showcases Lauori’s talents as a writer as he uses an array of unique styles throughout this short collection of stories.
The final story I would like to mention is story about a couple who are from different countries and having a long distance relationship. John is traveling from The Netherlands and Annie is traveling from France and they are on their way to Brussels to spend a long weekend together. They speak different languages, grew up in different countries with different cultures but for a while they have made their relationship work. But they have both arrived in Brussels with the intention of breaking up with one another.
The language barriers and cultural differences have taken their toll on the relationship and they both want out. The best example of their communication issues is described by John who says that Annie never easily gets his dry sense of humor and by the time he has to explain all of his jokes to her they are no longer funny. This story has a surprise ending which I don’t want to give away. But I will say that this is one of the best stories in the collection.
Overall this is a unique collection of stories that I can recommend to anyone who wants to experience a wide range of literary styles in a single collection of stories.
This book contains a series of short stories told by a group of men sitting around at café in Morocco. It appears that they have been friends for quite some time as there is a lot of teasing, interrupting, and jocularity mixed in with their stories. Their tales range from the funny to the rather serious and I found that the theme of being an outsider in a foreign land pervades the entire collection.
The funniest tale is the title story in which a man is sent to Belgium by the Moroccan government to make a very important deal to import grain to his starving country. The man checks into a hotel and is very nervous that the fate of his country hangs on his ability to negotiate this most important deal. Since he is only visiting for one day he packs lightly and brings a single pair of nice trousers. He is awakened during his first night in his hotel room by a horrible noise and gets out of bed to find that an intruder has come through his window. At first glance it seems that nothing valuable has been stolen from him; but further inspection by the light of day reveals that his pants, his only pair of nice pants have been taken!
The man absolutely panics and goes does to the front desk of the hotel in his pajamas to ask for help. The clerk directs the man to a charity shop which has a single pair of pants that are just his size; but the pants are a ridiculous pair of golf pants. The events of his meeting, while he is wearing these pants, are hilarious but everything does work out for the best for him and for the fate of Morocco.
By contrast, there are two rather serious stories that I would like to describe from the collection. The first one, entitled “Dislocation,” is particularly fitting for what is going on in the world as far as refugees seeking asylum and people displaying xenophobia to anyone who seems foreign. I found his use of repeating the same lines in the story very Homeric but instead of repeating epithets he repeats the entire beginning lines of his story over and over again. Each time he repeats his story he begins with the phrase, “What would it be like, he asked himself, a world where everything was foreign?” Each time he repeats these lines he adds more details about his life. We discover that the man does, in fact, feel like a foreigner because he is a Moroccan who feels more French than Moroccan and is living in The Netherlands. He is treated as a foreigner, an outsider and his walk home becomes slower and slower as he contemplates his feeling of dislocation. This story showcases Lauori’s talents as a writer as he uses an array of unique styles throughout this short collection of stories.
The final story I would like to mention is story about a couple who are from different countries and having a long distance relationship. John is traveling from The Netherlands and Annie is traveling from France and they are on their way to Brussels to spend a long weekend together. They speak different languages, grew up in different countries with different cultures but for a while they have made their relationship work. But they have both arrived in Brussels with the intention of breaking up with one another.
The language barriers and cultural differences have taken their toll on the relationship and they both want out. The best example of their communication issues is described by John who says that Annie never easily gets his dry sense of humor and by the time he has to explain all of his jokes to her they are no longer funny. This story has a surprise ending which I don’t want to give away. But I will say that this is one of the best stories in the collection.
Overall this is a unique collection of stories that I can recommend to anyone who wants to experience a wide range of literary styles in a single collection of stories.
August 15, 2025
Real Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Award-winning English-language debut by Morocco's most prominent contemporary author, a linked story collection exploring what it means to be foreign.
Included in World Literature Today's "75 Notable Translations of 2016"
One of Literary Hub's Books to Read this May
One of Asbury Park Press Books to Read this Summer
This long-awaited English-language debut from Morocco's most prominent contemporary writer won the Prix Gouncourt de Nouvelles, France's most prestigious literary award, for best story collection. Laroui uses surrealism, laugh-out-loud humor, and profound compassion across a variety of literary styles to highlight the absurdity of the human condition, exploring the realities of life in a world where everything is foreign.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Funny, farcical, sometimes surreal...or do I just lack context to get the concrete reality of what he's saying...we have Laila Lalami to thank for this collection's appearance in English nine years ago. She set out to interest US publishers in a different book entirely, On Islamism: A Personal Refutation of Religious Fundamentalism, which is still untranslated into English (though available in Dutch and, of course, French) and which I myownself would devour whole, but this collection won the nod of premiering Laroui's quirky worldview to us. Deep Vellum does this work from multiple languages into US English and, every #WITMonth, takes a strong lead on books reviewed here.
The tone of this collection is deadpan. Much of the humor, culturally bound, in it requires a moment's thought to "get" but is never crudely or condescendingly signposted by either the author or translator Emma Ramadan. I find this refreshing; I am happy to make an effort to understand what I'm reading, and I'm aware people who read my reviews are, too. There is a lot of surface fun, and a lot of surreal oddness, to enjoy in the stories. It's a collection that tells us, no matter where we are in space and time, others in other spaces and times were and are just as perplexed, bemused, and wryly amused as we are.
Comme d'habitude, these nine stories will be dealt with by the Bryce Method.
The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers has fun with the fish-out-of-water trope, telling it in slightly Kafkaesque twists as a self-important fool has truly weird things...your trousers ever just disappear on you?...then even stranger responses to his predicament that are wildly disproportionate. Skewers every archetype of The Establishment. As the fool narrates his story to "us" (the invisible audience stand-in) he grows more and more agitated, and I grew louder and louder in my cackles and snorts. 4.5*
Dislocation does what it says on the tin...dislocates you. The question, repeated with variations. "What would it be like, he asked himself, a world where everything is foreign?" and we are off into an entire field of rabbit holes leading into misuderstandings, double entendres, miscommunications. What does Maati's "sweet, kind Anna" mean when she says he's "Moroccan by birth, in body, but "French in the head"? What levels of displacement, belonging without being accepted, are there in "sweet, kind Anna" (who isn't) "laughed in his face {when} even he wasn't very convinced by his pro domo plea." (An argument made in support of one's existing case.) Deeper and deeper, Anna the touchstone, the source of all the emotion (mostly anger) as the narrator, I kept thinking of him as the interlocutor, the straight man, feeding me thoughts I found funny-hmmm and funny-haha in differing proportions the deeper we got into Utrecht where he seeks asylum and has married "sweet, kind Anna" as "{t}his one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small, decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it."
He decides, stunned, what these twists and turns and gyrations mean. You get the same privilege. I was swept into the slipstream and liked where I went. 4*
Born Nowhere is hung on the story-nail in the wall of Melpomene's study holding up the tragedy's summation: "After all, I know who I am, right?"
That remains to be seen, Moroccan in Paris, trying to evade repression oppression and impression: "This story proves what I have always believed. Identity problems don't exist. We create them! 'Who am I? Where am I going? What am I good for?'" He's in for an ugly surprise, like so many in this ever-more-tightly surveilled world of 2025. 3.5* for its sketchiness, incompleteness of narrative
Kuourigba, or the Laws of the Universe allows us to eavesdrop on the coffee-house chat of several young men, one a stringer for La Tribune de Casablanca with a tale of Kuourigba to tell. A general strike, a blow against global capitalism, and the forces of reaction writ small, local, petty in the French sense. Much palaver there in the Café de le Univers, in the shaggy-dog story way of young men solving problems they're a ways off from understanding. 3*
What's Not Said in Brussels is just not sayable. How does a couple survive long-distance (a question I'm intimately enmeshed in now) and survive language mismatches and cultural cross-purposes too? Annie (who doesn't get his jokes) and John (who "mansplains" everything) arrange to meet in Brussels with the intent of breaking up, though neither has said that to the other yet. A cloud of seemingly random bits and patches of thought and memory obtrude, intrude, exude a mist of influence over each of them.
Never decide things in the silence of your head when they need to be enacted in the clamor of life as we humans live it. It's pointless and it causes a lot of wasted anxiety. 4*
Bennani's Bodyguard poor Nagib, those autoimmune diseases might've been preferable.
Another Café romp through what language does when friends, close enemies that they are, become, and embody for each other, are in full cry as they pursue storycraft to the detriment, or the exaltation in reverse, of mere logic. 4.5*
The Invention of Dry Swimming is so surreal, so funny within that range of unreality, and so impossible to convey in summary that I'm offering only this: "If this story does not make you laugh in startled awareness of these thoughts being expressed, seek medical assistance for your probable ischemic event." 4.5*
Fifteen Minutes as Philosophers feels the most like it was written by a French intellectual (it was) and aimed at other French intellectuals (I ain't). I can't decide if this is intended to cause embarrassment or amusement. It left me unmoved. The only one in the entire collection I did not fully enjoy, it was still very intriguing because I was uncertain of the effect on me that was intended. 3*
The Night Before Revolution! War! Action at last! Overthrowing the Oppressor!
...and then what...? 4*
The Publisher Says: Award-winning English-language debut by Morocco's most prominent contemporary author, a linked story collection exploring what it means to be foreign.
Included in World Literature Today's "75 Notable Translations of 2016"
One of Literary Hub's Books to Read this May
One of Asbury Park Press Books to Read this Summer
This long-awaited English-language debut from Morocco's most prominent contemporary writer won the Prix Gouncourt de Nouvelles, France's most prestigious literary award, for best story collection. Laroui uses surrealism, laugh-out-loud humor, and profound compassion across a variety of literary styles to highlight the absurdity of the human condition, exploring the realities of life in a world where everything is foreign.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Funny, farcical, sometimes surreal...or do I just lack context to get the concrete reality of what he's saying...we have Laila Lalami to thank for this collection's appearance in English nine years ago. She set out to interest US publishers in a different book entirely, On Islamism: A Personal Refutation of Religious Fundamentalism, which is still untranslated into English (though available in Dutch and, of course, French) and which I myownself would devour whole, but this collection won the nod of premiering Laroui's quirky worldview to us. Deep Vellum does this work from multiple languages into US English and, every #WITMonth, takes a strong lead on books reviewed here.
The tone of this collection is deadpan. Much of the humor, culturally bound, in it requires a moment's thought to "get" but is never crudely or condescendingly signposted by either the author or translator Emma Ramadan. I find this refreshing; I am happy to make an effort to understand what I'm reading, and I'm aware people who read my reviews are, too. There is a lot of surface fun, and a lot of surreal oddness, to enjoy in the stories. It's a collection that tells us, no matter where we are in space and time, others in other spaces and times were and are just as perplexed, bemused, and wryly amused as we are.
Comme d'habitude, these nine stories will be dealt with by the Bryce Method.
The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers has fun with the fish-out-of-water trope, telling it in slightly Kafkaesque twists as a self-important fool has truly weird things...your trousers ever just disappear on you?...then even stranger responses to his predicament that are wildly disproportionate. Skewers every archetype of The Establishment. As the fool narrates his story to "us" (the invisible audience stand-in) he grows more and more agitated, and I grew louder and louder in my cackles and snorts. 4.5*
Dislocation does what it says on the tin...dislocates you. The question, repeated with variations. "What would it be like, he asked himself, a world where everything is foreign?" and we are off into an entire field of rabbit holes leading into misuderstandings, double entendres, miscommunications. What does Maati's "sweet, kind Anna" mean when she says he's "Moroccan by birth, in body, but "French in the head"? What levels of displacement, belonging without being accepted, are there in "sweet, kind Anna" (who isn't) "laughed in his face {when} even he wasn't very convinced by his pro domo plea." (An argument made in support of one's existing case.) Deeper and deeper, Anna the touchstone, the source of all the emotion (mostly anger) as the narrator, I kept thinking of him as the interlocutor, the straight man, feeding me thoughts I found funny-hmmm and funny-haha in differing proportions the deeper we got into Utrecht where he seeks asylum and has married "sweet, kind Anna" as "{t}his one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small, decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it."
He decides, stunned, what these twists and turns and gyrations mean. You get the same privilege. I was swept into the slipstream and liked where I went. 4*
Born Nowhere is hung on the story-nail in the wall of Melpomene's study holding up the tragedy's summation: "After all, I know who I am, right?"
That remains to be seen, Moroccan in Paris, trying to evade repression oppression and impression: "This story proves what I have always believed. Identity problems don't exist. We create them! 'Who am I? Where am I going? What am I good for?'" He's in for an ugly surprise, like so many in this ever-more-tightly surveilled world of 2025. 3.5* for its sketchiness, incompleteness of narrative
Kuourigba, or the Laws of the Universe allows us to eavesdrop on the coffee-house chat of several young men, one a stringer for La Tribune de Casablanca with a tale of Kuourigba to tell. A general strike, a blow against global capitalism, and the forces of reaction writ small, local, petty in the French sense. Much palaver there in the Café de le Univers, in the shaggy-dog story way of young men solving problems they're a ways off from understanding. 3*
What's Not Said in Brussels is just not sayable. How does a couple survive long-distance (a question I'm intimately enmeshed in now) and survive language mismatches and cultural cross-purposes too? Annie (who doesn't get his jokes) and John (who "mansplains" everything) arrange to meet in Brussels with the intent of breaking up, though neither has said that to the other yet. A cloud of seemingly random bits and patches of thought and memory obtrude, intrude, exude a mist of influence over each of them.
Never decide things in the silence of your head when they need to be enacted in the clamor of life as we humans live it. It's pointless and it causes a lot of wasted anxiety. 4*
Bennani's Bodyguard poor Nagib, those autoimmune diseases might've been preferable.
Another Café romp through what language does when friends, close enemies that they are, become, and embody for each other, are in full cry as they pursue storycraft to the detriment, or the exaltation in reverse, of mere logic. 4.5*
The Invention of Dry Swimming is so surreal, so funny within that range of unreality, and so impossible to convey in summary that I'm offering only this: "If this story does not make you laugh in startled awareness of these thoughts being expressed, seek medical assistance for your probable ischemic event." 4.5*
Fifteen Minutes as Philosophers feels the most like it was written by a French intellectual (it was) and aimed at other French intellectuals (I ain't). I can't decide if this is intended to cause embarrassment or amusement. It left me unmoved. The only one in the entire collection I did not fully enjoy, it was still very intriguing because I was uncertain of the effect on me that was intended. 3*
The Night Before Revolution! War! Action at last! Overthrowing the Oppressor!
...and then what...? 4*
October 26, 2013
Les neuf nouvelles qui composent le recueil de Fouad Laroui oscillent entre humour, recherche stylistique, interpellation sociale et amour du monde que l'on s'y traîne au Maroc ou aux Pays-Bas, à Paris ou à Bruxelles. Elles traitent des univers qui s'entrechoquent cognés sur les barrières de la langue, perchés sur les balustrades des a priori, coincés dans les hygiaphones des cellules de l'administration ou pendus à l'absurde des apparences.
Seulement voilà, les nouvelles ne font qu'osciller entre humour, recherche stylistique et interpellation sociale. J'ai trouvé – et cela n'engagera que moi – que Fouad Laroui n'a pas réussi à lier ses performances réelles et indéniables : son humour ne sert pas son style, son style ne sert que peu ses interrogations, ses interrogations plombent son humour. J'en ai retiré un triste sentiment d'inachevé. Cependant ce recueil ne laisse pas insensible. Au contraire. Il plaira à tous les amateurs de l'absurdité bureaucratique, aux amoureux des philosophes des cafés du commerce, et aux déracinés en quête d'hôtel du voyageur.
Seulement voilà, les nouvelles ne font qu'osciller entre humour, recherche stylistique et interpellation sociale. J'ai trouvé – et cela n'engagera que moi – que Fouad Laroui n'a pas réussi à lier ses performances réelles et indéniables : son humour ne sert pas son style, son style ne sert que peu ses interrogations, ses interrogations plombent son humour. J'en ai retiré un triste sentiment d'inachevé. Cependant ce recueil ne laisse pas insensible. Au contraire. Il plaira à tous les amateurs de l'absurdité bureaucratique, aux amoureux des philosophes des cafés du commerce, et aux déracinés en quête d'hôtel du voyageur.
August 9, 2016
Laroui est un de mes auteurs favoris et avec ce livre, il continue d'en être un. En particular, l'histoire "Dislocation" m'a ému. Dans l'ensemble, le livre est à la fois tragique, amusante, et émouvante. Je retournerai à ce livre pour des années et des années. Je le recommande à tous.
August 5, 2017
Laroui uses some narrative techniques I've never seen before, and it makes for a really fascinating collection of short stories. His narrative style is theatrical, and what I mean by that is that many of the stories in this collection are heavily dialogue based. Rather than simply telling us a story, Laroui will create a narrator (often with an audience) who tells the story (often with interruptions from the audience). In this sense, most of the central narrative is conveyed through dialogue, while the frame story is created in the third person.
Another really interesting technique is one used in the collection's second story, "Dislocation." This story begins with a pretty simple paragraph, then expands upon it in a kind of telescoping structure. So the simple paragraph is repeated but with slightly more information added. Then repeated again with slightly more information added. The same words used over and over, increasing in length, detail, and information for the first roughly 2/3 of the story. Then there is a shift where the protagonist begins interrogating, contradicting, and questioning the story he's been creating.
Apart from technique--which is in itself enough to recommend this collection--Laroui's style and thematic concerns are interesting. He deals much with cultural dislocation and the sense of not quite belonging, but he usually does so less with a kind of existential anguish than with irony and the absurd. For instance, in the titular story, Dassoukine, a Moroccan diplomat comes to the UN to buy grain after a bad harvest, but at a party of officials a waiter asks him to hold a tray, and the diplomat is mistaken for a waiter. Then the night before Dassoukine is supposed to meet the committee his one pair of trousers is stolen from his room, and he needs to buy a new pair from a second hand shop, but the only kind they have in his size is a hideous pair of golf pants. The officials with whom Dassoukine meets take him for a poor bumpkin sent by an impoverished country with no real sense of decorum, and that leads to the final decision of the committee (which I won't spoil).
Another really interesting technique is one used in the collection's second story, "Dislocation." This story begins with a pretty simple paragraph, then expands upon it in a kind of telescoping structure. So the simple paragraph is repeated but with slightly more information added. Then repeated again with slightly more information added. The same words used over and over, increasing in length, detail, and information for the first roughly 2/3 of the story. Then there is a shift where the protagonist begins interrogating, contradicting, and questioning the story he's been creating.
Apart from technique--which is in itself enough to recommend this collection--Laroui's style and thematic concerns are interesting. He deals much with cultural dislocation and the sense of not quite belonging, but he usually does so less with a kind of existential anguish than with irony and the absurd. For instance, in the titular story, Dassoukine, a Moroccan diplomat comes to the UN to buy grain after a bad harvest, but at a party of officials a waiter asks him to hold a tray, and the diplomat is mistaken for a waiter. Then the night before Dassoukine is supposed to meet the committee his one pair of trousers is stolen from his room, and he needs to buy a new pair from a second hand shop, but the only kind they have in his size is a hideous pair of golf pants. The officials with whom Dassoukine meets take him for a poor bumpkin sent by an impoverished country with no real sense of decorum, and that leads to the final decision of the committee (which I won't spoil).
June 7, 2018
Outstanding examples of the short story writer’s craft. Genuine innovation in a literary form that is nigh on 200 years old is really really hard to pull off, and yet that is precisely what Fouad Laroui has achieved in his unforgettable immigrant story “Dislocation.” You just have to read it to believe it – major props to Emma Ramadan for translating such complex work with so much fluency and panache. In general, the nine stories in this volume can be divided into two categories:
a) The absurdities of daily life in the corrupt post-colonial tyranny that is Morocco, tales of surrealism and rebellion (and occasionally a mix of both) recounted by friends shooting endless hours of shit in the aptly named Café de l’Univers, a familiar scene that translates from the baking sands of the Maghreb to the shisha bars of Marble Arch and the ever-busy diners of Montmartre... these must be the true sons of Scheherazade!
b) The second and (to me) more interesting category are the stories set in the multicultural mélange of modern-day Western Europe. Anomie, isolation, deracination have never come through more powerfully than in “Dislocation”. The sheer polyglot confusion that prevails within today’s Schengen boundaries is the subject of a story like “What’s Not Said in Brussels” while others deal with the low-key clash of civilizations that is forever bubbling away under the surface between the ex-colonizer and the colonized. One doesn’t often come across books that faithfully convey the texture of modern European life; I remember “Tomorrow Pamplona” was an excellent example, Laroui’s stories are another. I’ve often thought that Schengen is the rightful heir to the reign of the extinct Habsburgs, glorious diversity being the common trait, and books like this record for posterity what I think will come to be seen as an extraordinary age.
The collection rounds off with The Night Before, a tale of Arab revolt that falls just on the right side of the fine line that separates “schematic” from “successful”. All in all, Laroui is a fantastic find, and I will be seeking out the rest of Dassoukine’s clothes pretty soon! Last but not least, a big thank you to Deep Vellum of Dallas, TX, without whose generous vision this volume would not have reached our lucky hands.
a) The absurdities of daily life in the corrupt post-colonial tyranny that is Morocco, tales of surrealism and rebellion (and occasionally a mix of both) recounted by friends shooting endless hours of shit in the aptly named Café de l’Univers, a familiar scene that translates from the baking sands of the Maghreb to the shisha bars of Marble Arch and the ever-busy diners of Montmartre... these must be the true sons of Scheherazade!
b) The second and (to me) more interesting category are the stories set in the multicultural mélange of modern-day Western Europe. Anomie, isolation, deracination have never come through more powerfully than in “Dislocation”. The sheer polyglot confusion that prevails within today’s Schengen boundaries is the subject of a story like “What’s Not Said in Brussels” while others deal with the low-key clash of civilizations that is forever bubbling away under the surface between the ex-colonizer and the colonized. One doesn’t often come across books that faithfully convey the texture of modern European life; I remember “Tomorrow Pamplona” was an excellent example, Laroui’s stories are another. I’ve often thought that Schengen is the rightful heir to the reign of the extinct Habsburgs, glorious diversity being the common trait, and books like this record for posterity what I think will come to be seen as an extraordinary age.
The collection rounds off with The Night Before, a tale of Arab revolt that falls just on the right side of the fine line that separates “schematic” from “successful”. All in all, Laroui is a fantastic find, and I will be seeking out the rest of Dassoukine’s clothes pretty soon! Last but not least, a big thank you to Deep Vellum of Dallas, TX, without whose generous vision this volume would not have reached our lucky hands.
January 1, 2019
« Quand je considère la petite durée de ma vie, absorbée dans l’éternité précédente et suivante… le petit espace que je remplis… abîmé dans l’infinie immensité des espaces que j’ignore et qui m’ignorent, je m’effraie et m’étonne de me voir ici plutôt que là… Il n’y a point de raison… Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. »
la philo fait réfléchir et que c’est dangereux, la réflexion. Dangereux pour le pouvoir… Il vaut mieux que le peuple ne réfléchisse pas, qu’il reste naïf, attaché à des dogmes qui lui commandent surtout l’obéissance. Que l’esclave obéisse sans poser de questions, c’est le rêve du maître.
« Qu’est-ce que la vie ? Une illusion, une ombre, une fiction… Toute la vie n’est qu’un songe, et les songes ne sont que des songes. »
Vous allez me rendre comme je l’étais avant de vous connaître… Insouciant ! Niais. « Bête », si vous voulez. Comme tous ces gens qui ne se préoccupent pas de philo, qui croient paisiblement en Dieu ou en la Providence, que la mort n’obsède pas, ni ce qu’il y a après !
Allez ! Rendez-moi bête ! Débarrassez-moi de la hantise de la mort.
La philo t’apprend à vivre en t’apprenant à mourir : les deux vont de pair. « Nous qui mourrons un jour, disons l’homme immortel au foyer de l’instant. »
Épictète l’a bien dit. Quelque chose comme : « Je ne peux craindre la mort car tant que je suis là, elle n’est pas là. Et quand elle sera là, je ne serai plus là. Donc, je ne rencontrerai jamais la mort. Donc je ne dois pas avoir peur d’elle… »
« Le jour se lève, il faut tenter de vivre ! » Ou bien faut-il que je t’explique de nouveau le mythe de Sisyphe ? Tu connais quand même les derniers mots de l’essai de Camus : « Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. »
Après le doute instillé par la philo, après l’angoisse de la mort. Après que l’absurde s’est installé au cœur… au cœur de ma vie, de mon existence. Je veux revenir à l’innocence d’avant… d’avant vos cours de philo !
la philo fait réfléchir et que c’est dangereux, la réflexion. Dangereux pour le pouvoir… Il vaut mieux que le peuple ne réfléchisse pas, qu’il reste naïf, attaché à des dogmes qui lui commandent surtout l’obéissance. Que l’esclave obéisse sans poser de questions, c’est le rêve du maître.
« Qu’est-ce que la vie ? Une illusion, une ombre, une fiction… Toute la vie n’est qu’un songe, et les songes ne sont que des songes. »
Vous allez me rendre comme je l’étais avant de vous connaître… Insouciant ! Niais. « Bête », si vous voulez. Comme tous ces gens qui ne se préoccupent pas de philo, qui croient paisiblement en Dieu ou en la Providence, que la mort n’obsède pas, ni ce qu’il y a après !
Allez ! Rendez-moi bête ! Débarrassez-moi de la hantise de la mort.
La philo t’apprend à vivre en t’apprenant à mourir : les deux vont de pair. « Nous qui mourrons un jour, disons l’homme immortel au foyer de l’instant. »
Épictète l’a bien dit. Quelque chose comme : « Je ne peux craindre la mort car tant que je suis là, elle n’est pas là. Et quand elle sera là, je ne serai plus là. Donc, je ne rencontrerai jamais la mort. Donc je ne dois pas avoir peur d’elle… »
« Le jour se lève, il faut tenter de vivre ! » Ou bien faut-il que je t’explique de nouveau le mythe de Sisyphe ? Tu connais quand même les derniers mots de l’essai de Camus : « Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. »
Après le doute instillé par la philo, après l’angoisse de la mort. Après que l’absurde s’est installé au cœur… au cœur de ma vie, de mon existence. Je veux revenir à l’innocence d’avant… d’avant vos cours de philo !
August 31, 2017
This book resonated for me in many places, and it's very funny. It's only 130 pp long, a series of short stories that sometimes verge on philosophical meditations about -- and explorations of the nuances of -- feeling foreign, displaced, dislocated, an outsider, surrounded by the unfamiliar. The stories are somewhat connected by allusions, characters' names, settings (a couple of stories are told in a coffee shop, the Cafe de l'Univers). Laroui is Moroccan and most of the stories are set there, with two in the Netherlands, one in Brussels. "Born Nowhere" really made me laugh, as did "The Invention of Dry Swimming." "What Was Not Said in Brussels" felt so true, the way random phrases insert themselves in our brains and sometimes direct our thoughts.
January 24, 2025
So much fun. A lot of the stories were told from the perspective of a person telling a story to a group of friends — with interruptions and deviations and all the things that make oral storytelling wonderful. Also a lot of playing with formats which was always generative and fruitful. I love how free this collection was. I love reading when it seems like the author is just having a grand ol time. Underneath all the amusement, there is a lot being said about class, and the state and identity. Perfect balance of fun with an ideological intention. Will come back to this one.
December 20, 2024
This collection of short story has this absurd yet lightheaded delivery that I have enjoyed where you can sense and read how authentic he portrayed how your day to day conversation in a café goes with the banter and unseriousness recounting what sound like the most unbelievable stories!
Fouad Laroui also made sure to adress some issues like identity, language barriers, religious trauma and social hierarchy that occur to both the diaspora and the Moroccans who live in their homeland
Fouad Laroui also made sure to adress some issues like identity, language barriers, religious trauma and social hierarchy that occur to both the diaspora and the Moroccans who live in their homeland
April 29, 2020
smart, sarcastic and very cultured writer, but... (I didn't like it much)
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Epicurus said it well. Something like: “I cannot fear death for as long as I am here, it is not here. And when it will be here, I will no longer be here. Thus, I will never meet death. Thus, I do not need to be afraid of it…”
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Epicurus said it well. Something like: “I cannot fear death for as long as I am here, it is not here. And when it will be here, I will no longer be here. Thus, I will never meet death. Thus, I do not need to be afraid of it…”
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April 21, 2023
Une œuvre de conte, une belle narration qui étale les absurdités de la vie, notamment marocaine. Une écriture sarcastique et philosophique qui te met en questionnement à chaque fin de chapitre. J’ai également aimé l’ambiguïté utilisée pour traiter certains chapitres laissant au lecteur l’espace d’imagination et d’interprétation personnelle.
June 9, 2021
Loved these short stories. (Though felt like I missed a few of the jokes because I read the translated version and some of the political critique since I'm not familiar with Morocco's politics). Had some great laughs. And loved the different story telling methods.
December 30, 2021
So interesting, often made me laugh out loud, and really made me think. Some of it went over my head a bit, but overall I still really liked it. Thanks so much to the publisher for my free eBook copy! :)
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