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The Hospital
“When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive…” So begins Ahmed Bouanani’s arresting, hallucinatory 1989 novel The Hospital, appearing for the first time in English translation. Based on Bouanani’s own experiences as a tuberculosis patient, the hospital begins to feel increasingly like a prison or a strange nightmare: the living resemble the dead; bureaucratic angels of death descend to direct traffic, claiming the lives of a motley cast of inmates one by one; childhood memories and fantasies of resurrection flash in and out of the narrator’s consciousness as the hospital transforms before his eyes into an eerie, metaphorical space. Somewhere along the way, the hospital’s iron gate disappears.
Like Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, the works of Franz Kafka—or perhaps like Mann’s The Magic Mountain thrown into a meat-grinder—The Hospital is a nosedive into the realms of the imagination, in which a journey to nowhere in particular leads to the most shocking places.
Like Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, the works of Franz Kafka—or perhaps like Mann’s The Magic Mountain thrown into a meat-grinder—The Hospital is a nosedive into the realms of the imagination, in which a journey to nowhere in particular leads to the most shocking places.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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April 16, 2025
I should start by saying this is the kind of book which, had I read it at another time, in another mood, I might have despised it. I think this is precisely the kind of book where you have to let it catch you at the right time, in the right frame of mind, otherwise it will infuriate you. On this occasion, however, I was evidently in that very place because I rather liked this and found some of the writing, and the almost delirious fever dream nature of the piece, to be very effective, often beautiful. I only bring up the idea of being in the right mood because I don't want to recommend it lightly as I'm sure there will be people who will loathe this thing. It would be too simplistic to say it's a Marmite book; more accurate to say it's one of those books that will need to find you (you know, the way cats choose their owners, like that). Anyway...
The basic premise (and it is very basic) is that a man is taken to hospital by the sea in Morocco. From this point on, the book becomes a plotless narrative whereby the narrator, without name, flits in and out of consciousness, daydreams, fever, nightmares, and an uncertain reality even when awake. The whole book is a swirling madness of delirious hallucination and reminiscing. The hospital itself never seems to have any patients who recover, or any doctors (there is mention of a male nurse) and the other patients our narrator does meet (all given rudimentary nicknames like Guzzler, Rover, and Fartface) appear equally lost or forgotten. There's no sense of time, only a building, Moroccan heat, and ambiguous illness. The narrator is often hard to follow but this is compensated for by the sheer quality of writing which often hits wonderful heights. Sometimes you will read a sentence more than once just so that you can enjoy it all over again.
The book isn't perfect and as I said at the beginning there are those (I'm certain) who will simply hate this thing. But some of the writing really did seduce me, to the extent that I found the piece to be ultimately mesmerising. Funnily enough, there are obvious comparisons with The Blind Owl by Hedayat which makes sense but only in so much that there is a dreamlike quality to events (otherwise not much in common given that I hated The Blind Owl). Likewise, there are Kafka references but I've always viewed Kafka as a man who dealt with the nightmare of bureaucracy rather than an eddying descent into a surreal and delirious lunacy. This, to me, was a more delicate and pleasurable madness, intriguing, odd, and immensely hypnotic. You can smell the incense, feel the desert heat, the dry atmosphere, and almost taste the hish-hash. The book is strangely pleasing, like being stoned, but always with a sense of comfort and ease. Despite Bouanani tackling death and disease, and, despite the curious, other worldly setting of the book, it never felt to me like it was ever bleak or dark, only lost in romantic thought and confused memory.
I think I liked it better during the periods when we were somewhere inside his delirium, his dreams, his ethereal delusions, rather than when we were present with him in the (admittedly unclear) reality of the hospital. Not perfect by any stretch (and not to everyone's tastes) but this one kinda spoke to me.
The basic premise (and it is very basic) is that a man is taken to hospital by the sea in Morocco. From this point on, the book becomes a plotless narrative whereby the narrator, without name, flits in and out of consciousness, daydreams, fever, nightmares, and an uncertain reality even when awake. The whole book is a swirling madness of delirious hallucination and reminiscing. The hospital itself never seems to have any patients who recover, or any doctors (there is mention of a male nurse) and the other patients our narrator does meet (all given rudimentary nicknames like Guzzler, Rover, and Fartface) appear equally lost or forgotten. There's no sense of time, only a building, Moroccan heat, and ambiguous illness. The narrator is often hard to follow but this is compensated for by the sheer quality of writing which often hits wonderful heights. Sometimes you will read a sentence more than once just so that you can enjoy it all over again.
I was reborn, quite despite myself, in a worn down universe, amid a vanquished, humiliated humanity, resigned to an absurd destiny of flowering graves that led to an uncertain future in intolerable paradises. I was heading toward a mythology of survival, leaving behind in my rotting limbs a prehistory of one thousand and four hundred years of hate, vainglory, and putrid nostalgia, under the clear sky of a false Andalusia where our murders has been in the making since our birth.
Right now, he's standing in front of his childhood home with the despair of someone who's completely lost, trying to recognise a door with a bronze knocker, a low building with windows so minuscule he can't imagine what purpose they could serve, a place that once observed him growing up on thin grasshopper legs, the neighbours' oddly horizontal stairs, dark and stinking of urine and weak stew, which in a faraway time provided a refuge for a romantic idyll.
The book isn't perfect and as I said at the beginning there are those (I'm certain) who will simply hate this thing. But some of the writing really did seduce me, to the extent that I found the piece to be ultimately mesmerising. Funnily enough, there are obvious comparisons with The Blind Owl by Hedayat which makes sense but only in so much that there is a dreamlike quality to events (otherwise not much in common given that I hated The Blind Owl). Likewise, there are Kafka references but I've always viewed Kafka as a man who dealt with the nightmare of bureaucracy rather than an eddying descent into a surreal and delirious lunacy. This, to me, was a more delicate and pleasurable madness, intriguing, odd, and immensely hypnotic. You can smell the incense, feel the desert heat, the dry atmosphere, and almost taste the hish-hash. The book is strangely pleasing, like being stoned, but always with a sense of comfort and ease. Despite Bouanani tackling death and disease, and, despite the curious, other worldly setting of the book, it never felt to me like it was ever bleak or dark, only lost in romantic thought and confused memory.
I think I liked it better during the periods when we were somewhere inside his delirium, his dreams, his ethereal delusions, rather than when we were present with him in the (admittedly unclear) reality of the hospital. Not perfect by any stretch (and not to everyone's tastes) but this one kinda spoke to me.
September 1, 2019
Regardless of where I look, even in the depths of my sleep, I see nothing but men set upon by a decay greater than ever before. It’s not just disease wearing them down.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award, The Hospital has been translated by Lara Vergnaud from Moroccan author Ahmed Bouanani's 1980 French language original L'hôpital.
The novel opens with our narrator entering hospital, with an immediate sense that this is a one-way trip, and to a hinterland between life and death.
When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive. At least that’s what I believed since I could smell on my skin the scents of a city that I would never see again.
As naturally as can be, I had fallen in behind one of death’s slow employees. I had added my name to a yellow sheet already covered with flyspecks. I had said thank you four or five times to heads nodding behind screens in tiny, enclosed spaces where decades of paperwork and x-ray films were piling up on dusty shelves and naturally as could be, I had to turn around in the lodge tonight to salute life one last time.
The world of the hospital is closed and self-contained, the patients (or inmates?) known by nicknames, all seemingly waiting for (the official confirmation of?) death. This is a rather dream-like narrative, as the narrator acknowledges - a reference that also speaks to his (and the author's?) literary influences:
“You’ll never know if you’re dreaming or not. Either way, your reality doesn’t matter!”
I still hear this voice from the past. The head doctor, senior nurse or one of the orderlies - unless it was someone I invented, influenced by my readings of Kafka, Borges and Buzzati in my youth.
Coincidentally this is the second novel I've read in the last month to make reference to Dino Buzzati's wonderful The Tartar Steppe, and the link to the limbo state inhabited by Giovanni Drogo in that novel, as he waits, rather eagerly but for many long years, for the tartar invasion, is well made. Although Kafka, Borges and Buzzati are relatively grounded and internally-logical in their narrative styles, even if the worlds they describe can be nightmarish and frustrating. The Hospital is more hallucinatory and fragmentary - The Blind Owl meets The Magic Mountain might be a better comparison than the narrator's own.
Overall - I book I perhaps admired more than I always fully appreciated (that a 100 page novel comes with a 30 page introduction to the author, his works and the political background to some of the allusions is telling), but a very worthy inclusion on the BTBA list. 3.5 stars.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award, The Hospital has been translated by Lara Vergnaud from Moroccan author Ahmed Bouanani's 1980 French language original L'hôpital.
The novel opens with our narrator entering hospital, with an immediate sense that this is a one-way trip, and to a hinterland between life and death.
When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive. At least that’s what I believed since I could smell on my skin the scents of a city that I would never see again.
As naturally as can be, I had fallen in behind one of death’s slow employees. I had added my name to a yellow sheet already covered with flyspecks. I had said thank you four or five times to heads nodding behind screens in tiny, enclosed spaces where decades of paperwork and x-ray films were piling up on dusty shelves and naturally as could be, I had to turn around in the lodge tonight to salute life one last time.
The world of the hospital is closed and self-contained, the patients (or inmates?) known by nicknames, all seemingly waiting for (the official confirmation of?) death. This is a rather dream-like narrative, as the narrator acknowledges - a reference that also speaks to his (and the author's?) literary influences:
“You’ll never know if you’re dreaming or not. Either way, your reality doesn’t matter!”
I still hear this voice from the past. The head doctor, senior nurse or one of the orderlies - unless it was someone I invented, influenced by my readings of Kafka, Borges and Buzzati in my youth.
Coincidentally this is the second novel I've read in the last month to make reference to Dino Buzzati's wonderful The Tartar Steppe, and the link to the limbo state inhabited by Giovanni Drogo in that novel, as he waits, rather eagerly but for many long years, for the tartar invasion, is well made. Although Kafka, Borges and Buzzati are relatively grounded and internally-logical in their narrative styles, even if the worlds they describe can be nightmarish and frustrating. The Hospital is more hallucinatory and fragmentary - The Blind Owl meets The Magic Mountain might be a better comparison than the narrator's own.
Overall - I book I perhaps admired more than I always fully appreciated (that a 100 page novel comes with a 30 page introduction to the author, his works and the political background to some of the allusions is telling), but a very worthy inclusion on the BTBA list. 3.5 stars.
April 29, 2020
"I rub shoulders with death every day, that's why I no longer fear him. I see him in the eyes of my companions, dressed like them in squalid blue pajamas, smoking crappy tobacco like everyone else, shooting the shit while waiting for dusk."
~From THE HOSPITAL by Ahmed Bouanani, translated from the French (Morocco) by Lara Vergnaud, 1990 original /2018 English from New Directions @ndpublishing
A fire destroyed Bouanani's apartment in 2006. Devastated by the loss of work, his wife sifted through the ashes and water damaged materials. She found a few pieces still in tact - L'Hôpital/The Hospital, some unpublished/unfinished works, and a copy of Jorge Luis Borges' El Aleph amongst them.
The story of how this amazing work came to be published is just as great as the piece itself - involving cross-referencing/cross Atlantic detective work, and the translator's work with Bouanani's eldest daughter, Touda, an artist and filmmaker who performs drag as Fernando Pessoa, and is caretaker of her late father's remaining work in film and print. Bringing this manuscript, and his poetry collection The Shutters to translation and print by New Directions in 2018 is a cinematic story itself!
The Hospital is brilliant, funny, philosophical, and fractured. A fictionalized tale of Bouanani's own hospitalization for tuberculosis, our unnamed narrator describes the other patients in his ward, their antics, conversations - both humorous and gross - but also hallucinatory. Is this really happening? Is this a fever dream?
Part Kafka, part One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, part Irvine Welsh gritty/gross. Brilliant translation of colloquial phrasing and dialect. A marvel to read - I'll share some more quotes below...
I'm no lawyer, but i say you have to know how to read between the lines of the law. Only idiots interpret it literally, idiots and honest people, which is the same difference. When they say 'society is well designed, you should always ask yourself: for whom?'"
Good God, what the hell am I doing here? It's the thousandth time I've asked myself this question, like some idle traveler who's visiting a place where boredom very quickly becomes insufferable.
Time during childhood is so uncertain. Later I learned that time was an adult invention, used to delineate the traps in which we struggle like small insects, or giants broken between heaven and earth.
The air in this place facilitates the growth of bizarre fungi in the imagination. At all hours I am caught between vertigo and delirium. Every day I feel my memory heal over it's scabs...
~From THE HOSPITAL by Ahmed Bouanani, translated from the French (Morocco) by Lara Vergnaud, 1990 original /2018 English from New Directions @ndpublishing
A fire destroyed Bouanani's apartment in 2006. Devastated by the loss of work, his wife sifted through the ashes and water damaged materials. She found a few pieces still in tact - L'Hôpital/The Hospital, some unpublished/unfinished works, and a copy of Jorge Luis Borges' El Aleph amongst them.
The story of how this amazing work came to be published is just as great as the piece itself - involving cross-referencing/cross Atlantic detective work, and the translator's work with Bouanani's eldest daughter, Touda, an artist and filmmaker who performs drag as Fernando Pessoa, and is caretaker of her late father's remaining work in film and print. Bringing this manuscript, and his poetry collection The Shutters to translation and print by New Directions in 2018 is a cinematic story itself!
The Hospital is brilliant, funny, philosophical, and fractured. A fictionalized tale of Bouanani's own hospitalization for tuberculosis, our unnamed narrator describes the other patients in his ward, their antics, conversations - both humorous and gross - but also hallucinatory. Is this really happening? Is this a fever dream?
Part Kafka, part One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, part Irvine Welsh gritty/gross. Brilliant translation of colloquial phrasing and dialect. A marvel to read - I'll share some more quotes below...
I'm no lawyer, but i say you have to know how to read between the lines of the law. Only idiots interpret it literally, idiots and honest people, which is the same difference. When they say 'society is well designed, you should always ask yourself: for whom?'"
Good God, what the hell am I doing here? It's the thousandth time I've asked myself this question, like some idle traveler who's visiting a place where boredom very quickly becomes insufferable.
Time during childhood is so uncertain. Later I learned that time was an adult invention, used to delineate the traps in which we struggle like small insects, or giants broken between heaven and earth.
The air in this place facilitates the growth of bizarre fungi in the imagination. At all hours I am caught between vertigo and delirium. Every day I feel my memory heal over it's scabs...
February 6, 2019
A stay in a hospital without cures or, seemingly, staff, the asylum run by the inmates: chaotic, terminal, interminable, indeterminate. One's passage through the hospital is in a single direction only. Once checked in, there is only one available exit. Bouanani seems to have been a resolute modernist, like other great Moroccan writers of his generation he appropriates the language and tools of one-time French colonizers along with a rich sense of myth and cultural experience to create something distinct and personal and formally precise, drifting between high and low, surreal-dream-essay-reflection on mortality and memory and carnivalesque sometimes sophomoric banter between tragic buffoons who make up the denizens of this twilight sanatarium. The rhythm this creates has a certain intended jarring effect, but it never totally pulled me in either, forgoing the atmosphere and intensity of the moment for these two stylistic extremes. Knowing that Bouanani was also a filmmaker (and considered, at least at one time, cinema to be a true universal language) has me quite entirely intrigued though.
January 18, 2019
Just couldn't get into this one. The text feels disconnected, no characterization at all so there's nothing to latch onto, and while I certainly don't mind abstract writing there wasn't much reason to care about what was going on.
April 22, 2019
I read this from the best translated book prize longlist and hope it makes the shortlist. The novel recounts a mostly interior monologue of the narrator's stay in a long term hospital for an unspecified illness,
(one supposes tuberculosis) and Bouanani's prose captures the feverish, surreal, hallucinatory sense of the experience. Buoanani has also embedded plenty of political and social commentary in the narrator's story, but it was his attempt to replicate the consciousness of the hospital patient that impressed me.
(one supposes tuberculosis) and Bouanani's prose captures the feverish, surreal, hallucinatory sense of the experience. Buoanani has also embedded plenty of political and social commentary in the narrator's story, but it was his attempt to replicate the consciousness of the hospital patient that impressed me.
February 9, 2023
Viena mūžīga slimnīcas diena marokāņu Selīna aprakstā. Murgaina un jaudīga grāmata, pat ja dažas nodaļas drusku tomēr izplēn.
December 29, 2018
This is a very disorientating and hallucinatory read. The amnestic narrator is always drifting off into dreams that are full of wild imagery. They fade in and out of the story both seamlessly and unexpectedly, contrasting with the real world which is at the same time both harsh and bland. The dreams are an escape and the narrator is often shaken awake by a friend, or the two craftily bleed into one another.
These dreams are often cold comfort, such as a darkly surreal episode where the narrator recalls imagining himself a spider, or a grotesque scene where legions of the decaying dead rise to be judged. There's a few scenes like this which are memorably described, but mostly these just fade into the background of the overall story of the hospital itself.
Life in the hospital itself is dream-like too. We get hints that time doesn't pass normally within its walls, and that they cannot find the gate to leave anymore. At one point a prominent character seemingly wanders off and simply disappears.
This is a quick read, but one that deserves full attention. This has been compared with Kafka and Hedayat, they certainly came to mind while reading this.
"I reread these pages without recognizing my handwriting, and then understand that my hope of remaining intact was like that of a drop of salt in the ocean. The air in this place facilitates the growth of bizarre fungi in the imagination. At all hours I am caught between vertigo and delirium. Every day I feel my memory heal over its scabs; I am reduced to a skeletal being, unappetizing even to the crows and vultures that I sense circling around me in my nightmares."
These dreams are often cold comfort, such as a darkly surreal episode where the narrator recalls imagining himself a spider, or a grotesque scene where legions of the decaying dead rise to be judged. There's a few scenes like this which are memorably described, but mostly these just fade into the background of the overall story of the hospital itself.
Life in the hospital itself is dream-like too. We get hints that time doesn't pass normally within its walls, and that they cannot find the gate to leave anymore. At one point a prominent character seemingly wanders off and simply disappears.
This is a quick read, but one that deserves full attention. This has been compared with Kafka and Hedayat, they certainly came to mind while reading this.
"I reread these pages without recognizing my handwriting, and then understand that my hope of remaining intact was like that of a drop of salt in the ocean. The air in this place facilitates the growth of bizarre fungi in the imagination. At all hours I am caught between vertigo and delirium. Every day I feel my memory heal over its scabs; I am reduced to a skeletal being, unappetizing even to the crows and vultures that I sense circling around me in my nightmares."
April 8, 2021
"Onze helden waren grote krachtpatsers met platvloerse bijnamen uit een volksliteratuur van likmevestje, die met elkaar op de vuist gingen tussen hun immer gedenkwaardige zuippartijen door, voordat ze hun toevlucht zochten tot koloniale bordelen en dromen waarin hun vochtige blik geen onderscheid meer kon maken tussen engelen en hoeren met voorgevels vol bankbiljetten van tienduizend, engelen ontsnapt uit een wreed paradijs en tweederangs hoeren die onder hun voddige kleren nauwelijks hun arme pijnlijke lichaam konden verbergen, gekneed door generaties soldaten uit het vreemdelingenlegioen, dronken matrozen, uitgehongerde bedoeïen en jongemannen op ontdekkingstocht, weggelopen van het bioscoopscherm of uit de vagevuurmoskee."
May 1, 2019
Ahmed Bouanani does a perfect job of capturing the fever-dream of being ill and helpless and the mental toll taken on a person whose body is not cooperating. Lara Vergnaud's translation never intrudes and the beautiful languages tells a dirty, lice-ridden tale. This phantasmagoric novel describes the indescribable. The hospital stay (for tuberculosis?) sounds almost more dangerous than not being hospitalized, though he does get meds, but the other patients and the very few staff we meet are a bunch of characters, to say the least. Funny, shocking, intimate, angry, hopeful and beautifully written - this is well worth a read.
August 19, 2018
I picked this up at the library and finished it in one sitting, so it is brief but also intoxicating with its language. Of course it reminds me of Kafka, in that it takes place in a hospital amidst the patients and bureaucracy, but it also is imbued with an almost cinematographic scope of description akin to Sergei Parajanov. Full of hallucinations, memories, hilarious encounters with patients (inmates) it is no wonder that "The Hospital" was written by a filmmaker. So glad I picked it up.
March 12, 2025
that hospital sure can hospital
April 29, 2025
I actually found the introduction to this drier than the writing itself, though I do appreciate the background on Bouanani's influence in Morocco. I did enjoy this and appreciate that Bouanani's writing was saved and translated after all these years.
January 15, 2020
I tend not to round up, so even though this book is better than three stars, it's not quite enough better to get four.
The book starts almost immediately wallowing in the grime and dirt and filth of things and never really lets up. It definitely sets the tone. I feel the reviews that speak of Kafkaesque and/or fantasy elements are overstating them, or possibly just using them as repetitions of their casual references in the text. I found the tale rather painfully grounded in reality, almost too much, in the sense of being bogged down by the people, their surroundings, and the eerie occurrences. The messy weight of lives.
It is possible to read the hospital and what happens there as a metaphor for humanity, but that also feels forced, or just too easy at least. I read it as a man's mindful, singular experience, albeit an incredibly unpleasant one. But hardly uncommon. We have all had similar experiences, and the hospital or clinic is often a place where time seems to stretch, or stand still, or curve. Few people look forward to spending any time in those places. Sickness, pain, excretions, sadness, and death reign there. The mind wanders, the outside world ceases to be real, escape seems unlikely at best. An (over)extended reading would allow the dream-like and allegorical hints to overwhelm, but it is possible to run away with grand themes or meanings in many novels. I think shorter ones like this encourage that approach, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If literature does anything well, it opens the mind to bigger things than what is right in front of us. I opted out of that for this book, and found the tale fabulous still. Definitely a phantasmic tale in places, but still all too real.
(The 30+ page Into paints Bouanani as rather fascinating man, and quite a lot more than just a writer. I guess it does help the reader understand some of the references, but I would have preferred it after the tale itself, as it was quite long, relatively speaking.)
The book starts almost immediately wallowing in the grime and dirt and filth of things and never really lets up. It definitely sets the tone. I feel the reviews that speak of Kafkaesque and/or fantasy elements are overstating them, or possibly just using them as repetitions of their casual references in the text. I found the tale rather painfully grounded in reality, almost too much, in the sense of being bogged down by the people, their surroundings, and the eerie occurrences. The messy weight of lives.
It is possible to read the hospital and what happens there as a metaphor for humanity, but that also feels forced, or just too easy at least. I read it as a man's mindful, singular experience, albeit an incredibly unpleasant one. But hardly uncommon. We have all had similar experiences, and the hospital or clinic is often a place where time seems to stretch, or stand still, or curve. Few people look forward to spending any time in those places. Sickness, pain, excretions, sadness, and death reign there. The mind wanders, the outside world ceases to be real, escape seems unlikely at best. An (over)extended reading would allow the dream-like and allegorical hints to overwhelm, but it is possible to run away with grand themes or meanings in many novels. I think shorter ones like this encourage that approach, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If literature does anything well, it opens the mind to bigger things than what is right in front of us. I opted out of that for this book, and found the tale fabulous still. Definitely a phantasmic tale in places, but still all too real.
(The 30+ page Into paints Bouanani as rather fascinating man, and quite a lot more than just a writer. I guess it does help the reader understand some of the references, but I would have preferred it after the tale itself, as it was quite long, relatively speaking.)
February 25, 2016
Je vais rester poli et dire tout simplement que peut être suis-je trop simple d'esprit pour apprécier... ehh... "l’allégorie infernale des années de plomb", le post-quarante cinquième degré, la profondeur d'esprit et le "génie" de feu Ahmed Bouanani.
Pour sa défense, il n'a apparemment pas voulu publier ce livre au début, ce n'est qu'après avoir été convaincu par deux éditeurs en 1990 qu'il le fera. C'est un texte intime donc, inspiré de son vécu et autres.
"- Et Sidi Bouâtoutou et Sidi Kaouki et Sidi Wassay et Lalla Rahma et notre copain Alexandre aux deux cornes, et Cheddad Bnou Ad et Napoléon Bonaparte, et tous les vautrés, les repus, les barbouzes, les scrofuleux, les négriers, les dégueulés, les planqués, les masturbés, et par ordre alphabétique, ici présent, Bou-Rass l'ambidextre, Chewing-Gum, Essuie-Glace, Fli-Fla, Nesma, et nous autres, les chefs-d'oeuvre du prépuce et de la prostate, inclinons-nous humblement, jusqu'à terre, le nez dans la merde parfumée, et disons...
- Amen, amen...!"
Much allegory, very intelligence, so wow
Pour sa défense, il n'a apparemment pas voulu publier ce livre au début, ce n'est qu'après avoir été convaincu par deux éditeurs en 1990 qu'il le fera. C'est un texte intime donc, inspiré de son vécu et autres.
"- Et Sidi Bouâtoutou et Sidi Kaouki et Sidi Wassay et Lalla Rahma et notre copain Alexandre aux deux cornes, et Cheddad Bnou Ad et Napoléon Bonaparte, et tous les vautrés, les repus, les barbouzes, les scrofuleux, les négriers, les dégueulés, les planqués, les masturbés, et par ordre alphabétique, ici présent, Bou-Rass l'ambidextre, Chewing-Gum, Essuie-Glace, Fli-Fla, Nesma, et nous autres, les chefs-d'oeuvre du prépuce et de la prostate, inclinons-nous humblement, jusqu'à terre, le nez dans la merde parfumée, et disons...
- Amen, amen...!"
Much allegory, very intelligence, so wow
May 26, 2020
Regarding those stuck in Bounani's Hospital:
"Their hell is already unbearable, living as they are in the expectation of imminent death, waiting that becomes all the more abominable because it takes place amid total inertia."
So... not the best book to snuggle up with during quarantine. The Hospital is a meditation on stillness and madness. It is telling that the moments of respite in this story, when I felt like, "ah! we're back on solid ground!" were the Kafkaesque scenes in the Hospital itself (as opposed to the hellish dreams or long spiraling passages of panic).
3 stars properly captures my feelings after finishing the book, but there is much to be explored here--yet those things would require re-reading, and that is something I won't do until they'll let us back into bars.
"Their hell is already unbearable, living as they are in the expectation of imminent death, waiting that becomes all the more abominable because it takes place amid total inertia."
So... not the best book to snuggle up with during quarantine. The Hospital is a meditation on stillness and madness. It is telling that the moments of respite in this story, when I felt like, "ah! we're back on solid ground!" were the Kafkaesque scenes in the Hospital itself (as opposed to the hellish dreams or long spiraling passages of panic).
3 stars properly captures my feelings after finishing the book, but there is much to be explored here--yet those things would require re-reading, and that is something I won't do until they'll let us back into bars.
August 20, 2025
Utrolig snål og spesiell bok. Man føler at man havner lenger og lenger inn i et mareritt med sin egen interne logikk. Det er ingen sentral handling i boka, men vi følger hovedpersonens ferd gjennom et sykt sykehus. Kan egentlig ikke beskrive handlinga bedre enn det.
Mye humor og referanser til marokkansk kultur. Opphavet til boka er Bounanis egen reise gjennom det marokkanske helsevesenet med tuberkolose. Trodde først boka orginalt ble skrevet på engelsk, men det viser seg at oversetteren har gjort en fantastisk jobb.
Mye humor og referanser til marokkansk kultur. Opphavet til boka er Bounanis egen reise gjennom det marokkanske helsevesenet med tuberkolose. Trodde først boka orginalt ble skrevet på engelsk, men det viser seg at oversetteren har gjort en fantastisk jobb.
February 3, 2026
2.5/5
I did end up feeling conflicted about The Hospital. I understand the point: the stasis, the lack of plot, the sense that nothing moves because nothing can move, but I never fully connected to it. As many other reviews have mentioned, the plot itself is pretty straightforward. The narrator is confined to a hospital (most likely a mental asylum) with no doctors, no diagnosis, no cure, and no real sense of time. There’s no expectation of recovery and no meaningful possibility of escape. The outside world technically exists, but life has been reduced to waiting, observation and decay. This would be a brilliant idea for a book (and I kept thinking about Max Blecher's Scarred Hearts, which plays with a similar setup), but the execution didn’t quite live up to how strong the premise is. Both Scarred Hearts and The Hospital start from a space of total isolation. The institution (sanatorium or hospital) replaces the outside entirely. Action barely matters and what’s foregrounded instead is interiority, the experience of being stuck inside a body or a condition that won’t move forward. In the end, there isn’t much beyond the setup itself, so the concept ends up doing most of the heavy lifting.
I did end up feeling conflicted about The Hospital. I understand the point: the stasis, the lack of plot, the sense that nothing moves because nothing can move, but I never fully connected to it. As many other reviews have mentioned, the plot itself is pretty straightforward. The narrator is confined to a hospital (most likely a mental asylum) with no doctors, no diagnosis, no cure, and no real sense of time. There’s no expectation of recovery and no meaningful possibility of escape. The outside world technically exists, but life has been reduced to waiting, observation and decay. This would be a brilliant idea for a book (and I kept thinking about Max Blecher's Scarred Hearts, which plays with a similar setup), but the execution didn’t quite live up to how strong the premise is. Both Scarred Hearts and The Hospital start from a space of total isolation. The institution (sanatorium or hospital) replaces the outside entirely. Action barely matters and what’s foregrounded instead is interiority, the experience of being stuck inside a body or a condition that won’t move forward. In the end, there isn’t much beyond the setup itself, so the concept ends up doing most of the heavy lifting.
July 11, 2021
Dit is een boek om in één ruk te lezen, niet elke dag twee of drie hoofdstukken.
Dan is het een bijna hallucinerende literaire trip. Regelmatig dacht ik: “Wat heb ik in vredesnaam gelezen?”
Mooie zinnen, mooie allitteraties, mooie en gruwelijke beelden over een ziekenhuis annex gevangenis, waarvan niemand weet waar de ijzeren poort is waardoor ze erin zijn gekomen.
Dan is het een bijna hallucinerende literaire trip. Regelmatig dacht ik: “Wat heb ik in vredesnaam gelezen?”
Mooie zinnen, mooie allitteraties, mooie en gruwelijke beelden over een ziekenhuis annex gevangenis, waarvan niemand weet waar de ijzeren poort is waardoor ze erin zijn gekomen.
April 13, 2022
Indrukwekkend boek dat leest als een nachtmerrie met een paar kleine lichtpuntjes maar door de heel scherpe fantasierijke taal meer dan de moeite waard is.
Read
September 6, 2023one of those books where i spaced out too much (no i will noT be rereading!!)
April 28, 2025
içim şişti sanırım biraz :/
February 20, 2019
This reads like a nightmare version of The Magic Mountain in which characters are confined to an inescapable hospital which is there for the sole purpose of making them weak and crazy, as well as sick. No one seems to know what is actually wrong with them, outside of a feeling of general malaise, and there is a startling lack of any kind of medical care happening. How much of this is a political statement, I couldn't say, but it made me think that these were rebels being confined until they would abandon their rebellious beliefs, made victims by the state a guarded strictly until they were "corrected".
September 30, 2025
Les passages sur la mort, la maladie (les deux premiers chapitres surtout) sont forts. Super intéressant comme lecture, à cause de la position du narrateur et des conditions des personnages autour de lui, on ne sait jamais ce qui est vrai/faux, ça laisse énormément de place à l'interprétation.
"C'est un drôle de cimetière, les pensionnaires vivent au-dessus des tombes."
"C'est un drôle de cimetière, les pensionnaires vivent au-dessus des tombes."
January 27, 2021
Gevangen met demonen in visioenen en waanzin
Een anonieme ik-verteller slijt zijn dagen in een labyrintisch geheel van muren en gesloten deuren. In de ijskoude, vochtige en ranzige atmosfeer hebben zijn tijdsbesef en zijn God hem verlaten. Hij zit klem tussen beton, verdriet en de dood. Pas gestorvenen worden direct door kamergenoten bestolen van hun voddige kleding en schamele bezittingen. En naderhand praat niemand meer over de doden.
'Toen ik door de grote ijzeren poort van de kliniek liep, leefde ik waarschijnlijk nog. Dat dacht ik tenminste, want ik rook op mijn huid de geuren van de stad die ik nooit zou weerzien. […] en op de brede laan had ik, alsof er niets aan de hand was, niet meer de moeite genomen achterom te kijken en het leven een laatste keer vaarwel te zeggen.'
Alleen de meest zintuiglijke ervaringen uit het verleden lijken zich voldoende vastgezet te hebben en drijven zo nu en dan boven. De dodelijke verveling en de voorspelbaarheid van de dagen die de levende doden in deze treurige hel doorbrengen, veroorzaken afstomping van gevoelens en de meesten hebben hun nieuwsgierigheid allang verloren, want achter elke gesloten deur is er immers weer een andere. Vanuit deze 'detentie' terugkeren naar de wereld die ze achter zich hebben gelaten, wordt een idee-fixe en de ijzeren poort een one-way-street.
De verteller is beschouwend en vertelt zijn verhaal door middel van monologue intérieur, afgewisseld met dialoog. Naar het einde van de roman toe versnelt het verhaal en volgen beelden elkaar steeds sneller op. De wereld achter de muren lijkt voor hem steeds bedreigender te worden, maar binnen de kliniek kan hij zich verstoppen in zijn dromen en visioenen. Hij vraagt zich af of zijn gevangenschap misschien slechts een 'optische illusie' is, maar het is als een beklemmende, angstige droom, waaruit ontwaken niet mogelijk is en hij komt langzaam maar zeker tot de slotsom dat het bestaan in de kliniek een kwestie van overleven is. De meeste patiënten wachten op het moment van hun onvermijdelijke dood, want op genezing hoeft niemand te rekenen.
'Overal zijn zieken, die precies hetzelfde zijn als andere zieken en die op een dag hopen te herstellen, zodat ze terug kunnen naar hun dierbaren aan de andere kant van die vermaledijde muren, terwijl helaas aan het eind van ieder pad hier de dood klaarstaat om iedereen als een ordinair vliegje te verzwelgen!'
Ahmed Bouanani, geboren in 1938 in Marokko, was dichter, auteur, illustrator en filmregisseur, en werd vooral bekend door de film The Mirage die hij in 1980 maakte in opdracht van 10e Dubai International Film Festival in 2013. De film deed het goed op de lijst van de beste en belangrijkste 100 Arabische films. Voor de krant Al Maghrib maakte hij in 1983 een stripverhaal. Drie poëziebundels kwamen er uit zijn pen en er is slechts één roman gepubliceerd; De kliniek. Door zijn terughoudendheid om aandacht te genereren voor zijn eigen werk en het uit te geven, zijn er in 2006 vele manuscripten in rook opgegaan bij brand in zijn appartement. Na zijn dood in 2011 echter bleek zijn nalatenschap nog vele stukken te bevatten, die door zijn dochter worden gekoesterd.
De roman is te lezen als een allegorie op het leven van de Marokkaanse bevolking die zuchtte onder de onvermurwbare dictatuur van de in 1961 tot koning gekroonde Hassan II. ('Zelfs onze buurtkapper is een spion voor de politie. En Hoummane de taxichauffeur is eigenlijk inspecteur van de inlichtingendienst'.) Een raadselachtige en hallucinante vertelling met een surrealistische entourage, waarin Bouanani de treurigheid van zijn 'gevangenschap' beschrijft, waarin de patiënten om hem heen, als schimmige geesten zijn, soms apathisch, dan weer grappig, grof of opgefokt. Niemand weet hoe lang ze daar al verblijven en of ze ooit de weg naar buiten nog kunnen vinden. Het verblijf in de kliniek lijkt zich af te spelen in de gedachten van de verteller. Een kakofonie van radeloze hersenspinsels houdt hem bezig: de angst voor een depressie, de dreigende lethargie en de angst voor de vrijheid.
De vergelijking met De blinde uil van Sadegh Hedayat is evident, maar One flew over the cuckoo's nest zal tijdens het lezen ook op menig moment oppoppen. Bouanani's taal en manier van schrijven roepen als vanzelf beelden op, zodat het lezen als het ware een visuele belevenis wordt. Hester Tollenaar, die voor de vloeiende vertaling garant stond, beschrijft in het nawoord dat - getuige de brieven aan zijn vrouw - een maandenlang sanatoriumverblijf in 1967 veel impact op hem moet hebben gehad en jaren later ongetwijfeld het fundament vormde van De kliniek. Een geslaagde vergeten klassieker die is opgenomen in de Schwob winteractie 2020/2021
Dit uitgebreide en interessante artikel over de mens achter Bouanani is beslist de moeite van het lezen waard
https://www.bidoun.org/articles/the-n...
Een anonieme ik-verteller slijt zijn dagen in een labyrintisch geheel van muren en gesloten deuren. In de ijskoude, vochtige en ranzige atmosfeer hebben zijn tijdsbesef en zijn God hem verlaten. Hij zit klem tussen beton, verdriet en de dood. Pas gestorvenen worden direct door kamergenoten bestolen van hun voddige kleding en schamele bezittingen. En naderhand praat niemand meer over de doden.
'Toen ik door de grote ijzeren poort van de kliniek liep, leefde ik waarschijnlijk nog. Dat dacht ik tenminste, want ik rook op mijn huid de geuren van de stad die ik nooit zou weerzien. […] en op de brede laan had ik, alsof er niets aan de hand was, niet meer de moeite genomen achterom te kijken en het leven een laatste keer vaarwel te zeggen.'
Alleen de meest zintuiglijke ervaringen uit het verleden lijken zich voldoende vastgezet te hebben en drijven zo nu en dan boven. De dodelijke verveling en de voorspelbaarheid van de dagen die de levende doden in deze treurige hel doorbrengen, veroorzaken afstomping van gevoelens en de meesten hebben hun nieuwsgierigheid allang verloren, want achter elke gesloten deur is er immers weer een andere. Vanuit deze 'detentie' terugkeren naar de wereld die ze achter zich hebben gelaten, wordt een idee-fixe en de ijzeren poort een one-way-street.
De verteller is beschouwend en vertelt zijn verhaal door middel van monologue intérieur, afgewisseld met dialoog. Naar het einde van de roman toe versnelt het verhaal en volgen beelden elkaar steeds sneller op. De wereld achter de muren lijkt voor hem steeds bedreigender te worden, maar binnen de kliniek kan hij zich verstoppen in zijn dromen en visioenen. Hij vraagt zich af of zijn gevangenschap misschien slechts een 'optische illusie' is, maar het is als een beklemmende, angstige droom, waaruit ontwaken niet mogelijk is en hij komt langzaam maar zeker tot de slotsom dat het bestaan in de kliniek een kwestie van overleven is. De meeste patiënten wachten op het moment van hun onvermijdelijke dood, want op genezing hoeft niemand te rekenen.
'Overal zijn zieken, die precies hetzelfde zijn als andere zieken en die op een dag hopen te herstellen, zodat ze terug kunnen naar hun dierbaren aan de andere kant van die vermaledijde muren, terwijl helaas aan het eind van ieder pad hier de dood klaarstaat om iedereen als een ordinair vliegje te verzwelgen!'
Ahmed Bouanani, geboren in 1938 in Marokko, was dichter, auteur, illustrator en filmregisseur, en werd vooral bekend door de film The Mirage die hij in 1980 maakte in opdracht van 10e Dubai International Film Festival in 2013. De film deed het goed op de lijst van de beste en belangrijkste 100 Arabische films. Voor de krant Al Maghrib maakte hij in 1983 een stripverhaal. Drie poëziebundels kwamen er uit zijn pen en er is slechts één roman gepubliceerd; De kliniek. Door zijn terughoudendheid om aandacht te genereren voor zijn eigen werk en het uit te geven, zijn er in 2006 vele manuscripten in rook opgegaan bij brand in zijn appartement. Na zijn dood in 2011 echter bleek zijn nalatenschap nog vele stukken te bevatten, die door zijn dochter worden gekoesterd.
De roman is te lezen als een allegorie op het leven van de Marokkaanse bevolking die zuchtte onder de onvermurwbare dictatuur van de in 1961 tot koning gekroonde Hassan II. ('Zelfs onze buurtkapper is een spion voor de politie. En Hoummane de taxichauffeur is eigenlijk inspecteur van de inlichtingendienst'.) Een raadselachtige en hallucinante vertelling met een surrealistische entourage, waarin Bouanani de treurigheid van zijn 'gevangenschap' beschrijft, waarin de patiënten om hem heen, als schimmige geesten zijn, soms apathisch, dan weer grappig, grof of opgefokt. Niemand weet hoe lang ze daar al verblijven en of ze ooit de weg naar buiten nog kunnen vinden. Het verblijf in de kliniek lijkt zich af te spelen in de gedachten van de verteller. Een kakofonie van radeloze hersenspinsels houdt hem bezig: de angst voor een depressie, de dreigende lethargie en de angst voor de vrijheid.
De vergelijking met De blinde uil van Sadegh Hedayat is evident, maar One flew over the cuckoo's nest zal tijdens het lezen ook op menig moment oppoppen. Bouanani's taal en manier van schrijven roepen als vanzelf beelden op, zodat het lezen als het ware een visuele belevenis wordt. Hester Tollenaar, die voor de vloeiende vertaling garant stond, beschrijft in het nawoord dat - getuige de brieven aan zijn vrouw - een maandenlang sanatoriumverblijf in 1967 veel impact op hem moet hebben gehad en jaren later ongetwijfeld het fundament vormde van De kliniek. Een geslaagde vergeten klassieker die is opgenomen in de Schwob winteractie 2020/2021
Dit uitgebreide en interessante artikel over de mens achter Bouanani is beslist de moeite van het lezen waard
https://www.bidoun.org/articles/the-n...
December 8, 2018
"I'm in between jobs, sir. My life is temporary, my hopes are temporary, my sleep and dreams are temporary. I am temporarily counting a lot on the future, and here, look, sir, I have a temporary work certificate for when I'll be temporarily healed."
April 2, 2025
Holden’in kuytu serisinden okuduğum üçüncü kitap oldu sanırım. Güzel bir seri olarak devam ediyor şimdiye kadar. Bu kitapta anlatılan hikayenin içine tam olarak giremedim maalesef, sanırım daha dikkatli bir okuma istiyordu. Karakterimiz ne olduğunu bilmediğimiz bir hastalıktan dolayı hastaneye yatmak durumunda kalıyor. Biz de doktorların ve hastane personelinin çok anlatılmadığı, genelde hastaların başrolde olduğu bu bol halüsinasyonlu, yer yer absürt hikayeyi okuyoruz. Hastaneye girdikten sonraki günlerinde bir daha o kapıyı asla görememeleri, oradan asla çıkamamaları, anlatıcımızın kendisini bir örümcek olarak gördüğü kısımlar, hastanenin boğucu havası Kafka’nın karanlık atmosferlerini hatırlatıyor. Zaten yazarın tarzı da Kafka’ya ve Sadık Hidayet’e benzetiliyormuş.
2,5/5
2,5/5
July 19, 2018
A magnificent hallucinatory mindfuck charting the narrator's descent into existential, sterile hell. An obvious conceptual touchpoint would be The Blind Owl, but also think The Maimed meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
4.5 stars.
4.5 stars.
March 13, 2022
I rub shoulders with death every day, that's why I no longer fear him.
⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
A bizarre, hallucinatory tale of a man stuck in a locked hospital ward, waiting for death.
Did not like this at all. The characters were disgusting, the dialogue was boring, everything seemed one part male masturbatory daydream and one part literary circlejerk. An entire third of the book is just a gushing introduction about how great the author is (which is far more compelling than the actual story itself, I must admit).
This doesn't even have the positive of being a stream of consciousness ramble, which can be somewhat interesting to read. Nope, this is written like a normal story, it's just absolutely shit.
September 17, 2021
This is literally about a filmmaker who is dying of tuberculosis. I thought the introspection from being terminally ill might enhance the text, but it was just a really sad attempt for Bouanani to document what he knew were his final days.
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