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“Muslim”: A Novel
Muslim: A Novel is a genre-bending, poetic reflection on what it means to be Muslim from one of France's leading writers. In this novel, the second in a trilogy, Rahmani's narrator contemplates the loss of her native language and her imprisonment and exile for being Muslim, woven together in an exploration of the political and personal relationship of language within the fraught history of Islam. Drawing inspiration from the oral histories of her native Berber language, the Koran, and French children's tales, Rahmani combines fiction and lyric essay in to tell an important story, both powerful and visionary, of identity, persecution, and violence.
145 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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710 people want to read
About the author
Zahia Rahmani
8 books8 followersZahia Rahmani, an author and art historian at the National Institute for Art History in France, was born in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence. Her father was an accused Harki, who was imprisoned as a traitor by the Algerians after the war. He escaped prison and fled with his family to France in 1967. Rahmani now lives in Paris and Oise, France.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
August 20, 2021
Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded up because it's so elegant
Winner of the 2020 Albertine Prize
Selected for Asymptote's February 2019 Book Club
The Publisher Says: "Muslim": A Novel is a genre-bending, poetic reflection on what it means to be Muslim from one of France's leading writers. In this novel, the second in a trilogy, Rahmani's narrator contemplates the loss of her native language and her imprisonment and exile for being Muslim, woven together in an exploration of the political and personal relationship of language within the fraught history of Islam. Drawing inspiration from the oral histories of her native Berber language, the Koran, and French children's tales, Rahmani combines fiction and lyric essay in to tell an important story, both powerful and visionary, of identity, persecution, and violence.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: One can call a cat a dog, but that won't make the creature bark or fetch a stick. This is not a novel. It is, in my pretty well-informed opinion, a récit. And, at under 150 pages, it isn't possessed of the scope a novel needs. Here's why that's important: Expectations get set when a person reads a title, and someone expecting a deep, immersive novel experience is going to leave this read disappointed.
Sad that this is the case. I would've chosen a different title, in fact; but the book's beauties are plentiful, call it what one may, and much here is to be savored.
Born in 1962, the author and the narrator of the book, whom we understand to be the author in heightened and fictionalized form, was the child of a Harki father:
and a Berber mother:
Her father's imprisonment until a daring escape in 1967 meant her childhood was spent as a doubly disadvantaged person: Berber language and culture was no more accepted in Algeria after independence than before, and her father's legacy of French co-operation was the cause of trouble. Her entire life, then, was delineated in hyphens...she was never Rahman, herself, and later Elohim, her invented self. She was Othered in an Algeria bent of Arabizing to belong to a larger Islamic community of "Pan-Arabism" and then in France by not being white, not looking like other little girls did.
And here, at this juncture, fiction diverges from fact as Rahman-the-character not Rahmani-the-writer is exiled by the French language...and so leaves France, the not-homeland of the body. This story having been written and published in France in 2005, it's sort of inevitable that the US invasions of Muslim lands like Iraq in Operation Desert Storm take a sort-of vague center stage. French intellectual that she is, the author sets a good deal of the, um, events (no real "action" in a récit) in a prison camp much like the camp her Harki father occupied after Algeria's independence.
It is at this point that quotidian reality departs the scene for good; what replaces it is Reality-Plus, the enhanced experience of poetry and fable and fairy tale. The mere fact of her existence becomes threatening to Them, the Powers That Be. She is not one thing, not that she ever was ever allowed to be only one thing (herself); she is Other, and takes the identity Elohim, that ambiguous plural Ugaritic word for the monophysite Jewish god as well as for the Children of El as well as for the Canaanite pantheon...she never shies away from complexity, Author Rahmani. And so I've never made any attempt to make it clear if any of the foregoing is fiction or autobiography.
Because it doesn't matter.
If you choose to read this book, and I hope you will, the reason to do so isn't to go from Point A to Point Q. You're not doing the Stations of the Cross, Catholics; not on Hajj, Muslims. You're making the pilgrimage through the countryside tending towards Santiago de Compostela or Mecca or Canterbury. You're there, in other words, for the voyage in, towards the destination, and not the destination itself.
Because, in the end, there is no destination, no Home, no place for us on this Earth, that we do not demand accept us, speak into being intentionally and unyieldingly.
In just under an hour and a half, you'll make the acquaintance of one who has done precisely that.
Winner of the 2020 Albertine Prize
Selected for Asymptote's February 2019 Book Club
The Publisher Says: "Muslim": A Novel is a genre-bending, poetic reflection on what it means to be Muslim from one of France's leading writers. In this novel, the second in a trilogy, Rahmani's narrator contemplates the loss of her native language and her imprisonment and exile for being Muslim, woven together in an exploration of the political and personal relationship of language within the fraught history of Islam. Drawing inspiration from the oral histories of her native Berber language, the Koran, and French children's tales, Rahmani combines fiction and lyric essay in to tell an important story, both powerful and visionary, of identity, persecution, and violence.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: One can call a cat a dog, but that won't make the creature bark or fetch a stick. This is not a novel. It is, in my pretty well-informed opinion, a récit. And, at under 150 pages, it isn't possessed of the scope a novel needs. Here's why that's important: Expectations get set when a person reads a title, and someone expecting a deep, immersive novel experience is going to leave this read disappointed.
Sad that this is the case. I would've chosen a different title, in fact; but the book's beauties are plentiful, call it what one may, and much here is to be savored.
Born in 1962, the author and the narrator of the book, whom we understand to be the author in heightened and fictionalized form, was the child of a Harki father:
He was only the man who had impregnated my mother. I never knew what to call him. I never had a father. The war had stolen mine.
and a Berber mother:
I was old enough to walk, and yet my mother was carrying me on her back in a shawl, with a scarf tied around my head. She told me later that she used to put baby potatoes in the shawl to help my headaches. "Did I get headaches a lot when I was a child?" "I didn't have any medicine," she told me. "I had headaches a lot?" "All the time," she told me.
Her father's imprisonment until a daring escape in 1967 meant her childhood was spent as a doubly disadvantaged person: Berber language and culture was no more accepted in Algeria after independence than before, and her father's legacy of French co-operation was the cause of trouble. Her entire life, then, was delineated in hyphens...she was never Rahman, herself, and later Elohim, her invented self. She was Othered in an Algeria bent of Arabizing to belong to a larger Islamic community of "Pan-Arabism" and then in France by not being white, not looking like other little girls did.
And here, at this juncture, fiction diverges from fact as Rahman-the-character not Rahmani-the-writer is exiled by the French language...and so leaves France, the not-homeland of the body. This story having been written and published in France in 2005, it's sort of inevitable that the US invasions of Muslim lands like Iraq in Operation Desert Storm take a sort-of vague center stage. French intellectual that she is, the author sets a good deal of the, um, events (no real "action" in a récit) in a prison camp much like the camp her Harki father occupied after Algeria's independence.
They had just one Name. One Name. And no one suspected the evil inside them, no one bore witness to this evil inside them, the thing that they were referring to when they said, "we don’t want them, we don’t want others, not him, not her, not them." And this always brought to mind the scenes of trains leaving for Poland.
"Of all the excuses that intellectuals have found for executioners—and during the past ten years they have not been idle in the matter—the most pitiable of all is that the victim's thought—for which he was murdered—was fallacious."
It is at this point that quotidian reality departs the scene for good; what replaces it is Reality-Plus, the enhanced experience of poetry and fable and fairy tale. The mere fact of her existence becomes threatening to Them, the Powers That Be. She is not one thing, not that she ever was ever allowed to be only one thing (herself); she is Other, and takes the identity Elohim, that ambiguous plural Ugaritic word for the monophysite Jewish god as well as for the Children of El as well as for the Canaanite pantheon...she never shies away from complexity, Author Rahmani. And so I've never made any attempt to make it clear if any of the foregoing is fiction or autobiography.
Because it doesn't matter.
If you choose to read this book, and I hope you will, the reason to do so isn't to go from Point A to Point Q. You're not doing the Stations of the Cross, Catholics; not on Hajj, Muslims. You're making the pilgrimage through the countryside tending towards Santiago de Compostela or Mecca or Canterbury. You're there, in other words, for the voyage in, towards the destination, and not the destination itself.
Coming to France was my father's fault. He'd been banished from Algeria. Banished like so many others had been, and like so many more would be. Banished, stripped of a name, a soldier of the colonial army, a traitor to his country. They were the banished, the silent participants of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Iraq and elsewhere, the comrades of the losers of these wars, waiting to drag their shame home.
Because, in the end, there is no destination, no Home, no place for us on this Earth, that we do not demand accept us, speak into being intentionally and unyieldingly.
I wouldn’t be just an exile, an immigrant, an Arab, a Berber, a Muslim, or a foreigner, but something more. Despite all they might do to force me back into these categories, I wouldn’t return to those places. I would strive to find in these words whatever they had of the universal, of the beautiful, of the human, of the sublime. The rest—the dark flipside of the particulars—I would leave for those starving for identity politics. I would continue to love my mother tongue, and I would see how it linked me to Arab people, to Semitic peoples, to “Muslim”, and to “Jewish.” I wanted to learn everything that had been kept from me about these people and their languages.
In just under an hour and a half, you'll make the acquaintance of one who has done precisely that.
March 3, 2019
Not even for those close to me. I wouldn’t be just an exile, an immigrant, an Arab, a Berber, a Muslim, or a foreigner, but something more. Despite all they might do to force me back into these categories, I wouldn’t return to those places. I would strive to find in these words whatever they had of the universal, of the beautiful, of the human, of the sublime. The rest - the dark flipside of the particulars - I would leave for those starving for identity politics. I would continue to love my mother tongue, and I would see how it linked me to Arab people, to Semetic peoples, to “Muslim”, and to “Jewish.” I wanted to learn everything that had been kept from me about these people and their languages.
Zahia Rahmani's 2005 Muselman, Roman was the second in a loose trilogy of novels about the dispossessed. In 2019, it has been translated from French into English by Matthew Reeck (who rather impressively also translates from Hindi, Korean, and Urdu) and published by Deep Vellum.
It is also the latest book from the highly-recommended Asymptote Book Club, whose introduction to the book does it more justice than my review can:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
"Muslim": A Novel is a heady mixture of auto-fiction, an essay on language and religion, a metaphorical story of the detention of Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 and the US incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, and of tales drawn from French fairy stories (e.g. Perrault's Little Poucet), the oral myths of her Berber childhood and from the Koran, all in just 100 pages.
Like the author, the narrator was born in 1962, in Kabylie in Algeria, her mother from a berber tribe and her father a harki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harki), fighting on the losing side of the French in the Algerian war of independence, that ended the same year. When he escapes from prison in 1967, the family free to France.
Coming to France was my father's fault. He'd been banished from Algeria. Banished like so many others had been, and like so many more would be. Banished, stripped of a name, a soldier of the colonial army, a traitor to his country. They were the banished, the silent participants of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Iraq and elsewhere, the comrades of the losers of these wars, waiting to drag their shame home.
And there the narrator finds herself losing her first language, the aural language Tamazight, one she struggles to relearn (I lived in a language that had no primer) in the same way she learns French at school:
One night, I lost my language. My mother tongue. I was hardly five years old, and I'd lived in France for only a few weeks. I no longer spoke my language, a spoken language, a language of fairy tales, of ogres and legends. One night, a night of dreams and nightmares, gave me over to another language, that of Europe. I became hers one night, that night when, sleeping, I met an army of elephants.
The reference to the elephants a dream of her as a child that she later realises echoes The Night of the Elephants:
For Muslims, the Night of the Elephant marks the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. It was, the tradition says, when the army of Abraha, King of the Abyssinians, attacked Mecca. It is said that they were mounted on elephants procured from unknown parts, and upon these animals they set out to destroy the town. Seeing the animals, the city's people became scared. The elephants chased them into the mountains. But it was due to divine grace that thousands upon thousands of birds arrived to pelt the elephants with stones. The army fell into disarray. It was a debacle. The soldiers died of infections. And the town, now holy, was saved. That night, there, the first Muslim was born.
The novel muses on relationship between the language of her childhood and the aural teachings of Islam, a religion she sees as rooted in Judiasm, and how under pan-Arabism she feels forced into one identity, 'Muslim”, and one language, Arabic.
I was born into the world in a minor language. A language that was passed on orally, a language that was never read. We called it Tamazight. A Berber language that throughout the incursions of history was guarded tightly by its people for what it knew. For the people of the Atlas Mountains, in the regions of Kabylie, in the Aures Mountains, where the Mozabites and Tuareg lived, it was in their language and in their spoken traditions that Islam was introduced.
"Speak the word, speak the word, speak the word," the Archangel Gabriel said to Muhammad. "Speak what I tell you, and people will come to you." And it is said that the voice that came from on high spoke in Arabic to Muhammad in poetry. It is said that anyone who hears it will be moved. And was it for this reason that his wife and his nearest friends understood that he was no ordinary man? They listened to him, and they spread the word. And so the people came to Muhammad. They came and came, and more came after that. He told them, "We're all the children of Abraham."
Whether out of affection or necessity, Muhammad liked to listen to the stories of the Jewish people, a community that modeled faithfulness to God, which he respected. He wanted to listen to all of the stories—about Noah and his sons, about Loth and his brothers, about Isaac, Sarah, and Ishmael, about Pharaoh, Moses, and Aaron, about Job and his miseries, about Elijah, about Salomon, about Jacob and David. He wanted to hear about their rules for daily life, which he would use to make his own. And they translated these from Hebrew into his language. It was said that Zayd, the youngest of his scribes, had been Jewish. He still went to Jewish school. And, as for the second, Ubayy, it is said that he was a rabbi before his conversion. Upon the death of the Prophet, it was up to them to keep alive his memory, his grandeur, and his glory. They knew his verses by heart. A little while later, they passed the knowledge on to Uthman, the Caliph and the new guide of the community. With the gift of their manuscripts, with the writing out of the Book, they became bound to it. To this word, they added other stories, which they had heard or which had come to them by other means. Perhaps they omitted some stories as well. What exactly constitutes the divine word will be argued over forever, it is said, beneath the watchful eye of God and his Prophet. They made the Quran, the holy book of "Muslims." And Arabic, as a language, was reborn. It would be the language of this adventure. The language of Islam.
And in France she finds herself also put into the same categories - an exile, an immigrant, an Arab, a Berber, a Muslim, or a foreigner, but after she suffers a mental
She wishes to escape from this and travels to 'the desert', where after wandering for some time, she is caught by soldiers and imprisoned, and labelled once again "a Muslim" (I believe in the French original, the author uses the male pronoun to emphasise her rejection of the label). This is where the story becomes more metaphorical - exactly where she is, and who captures her is never stated, and references to desert storms if anything hark back to the first Gulf War, although what is described - the capture, interrogation, rendition to another country, even an orange jumpsuit, situate the book more in the post 9/11 world:
I left, I wanted to live elsewhere, and to hold up my humble head with dignity. I wanted a life. Another life. They wouldn't be able to hunt me down, if I was alone. And I found that life. It lasted only a few years.
Then they found me again. They stopped me. They questioned me. And my identity was again at stake. "What are you doing here?" they asked. "Where're you from?"
"A country where I couldn't remain."
Since then, I've been waiting in this camp.
..
How have I lived these past days? Everyone wants me, everyone condemns me. "Are you one of theirs?" "No." "Are you one of ours?" "No." Then you're a Muslim!
Overall, an impressive novel, albeit one at times whose metaphorical nature and non-linearity (the story is presented rather differently from the order laid out above, and it took me around 50 pages to really appreciate how it all hung together) detracted at times from the power of what is described.
3.5 stars
-------------------------------------------------------
This is the latest from the excellent Asymptote Book Club (https://www.asymptotejournal.com/book...), which I would highly recommend: the Asymptote Journal team select a piece of world literature each month from some of the leading independent presses in Canada, the US, and the UK.
And the list of books to date:
15. Feb-19 “Muslim”: A Novel by Zahia Rahmani. tr. Matthew Reeck, published by Deep Vellum
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... )
14. Jan-19 Night School: A Reader for Grownups by Zsófia Bán, tr. Jim Tucker, published by Open Letter
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
13. Dec-18 The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Jordan Stump, published by Archipelago Books
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
12. Nov-18 Hotel Tito, by Ivana Simić Bodrožić, tr. Ellen Elias-Bursać, published by Seven Stories Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
11. Oct-18 Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan tr. Brendan Freely and Yelda Türedi, published by Europa Editions
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
10. Sep-18 Moving Parts by Prabda Yoon, tr. Mui Poopoksakul , published by Tilted Axis Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
9. Aug-18 Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussen, tr. Emma Ramadan, published by Deep Vellum
8. Jul-18 I Didn't Talk by Beatriz Bracher, tr. Adam Morris. published by New Directions
7. Jun-18 The Tidings of the Trees by Wolfgang Hilbig, tr. Isabel Fargo Cole, published by Two Lines Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
6. May-18 The Chilli Bean Paste Clan by Yan Ge, tr. Nicky Harmon, published by Balestier Press
5. Apr-18 Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf, tr. Mara Faye Letham, published by And Other Stories
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
4. Mar-18 Trick by Dominico Starnone tr. Jhumpa Lahiri, published by Europa Editions
3. Feb-18 Love by Hanne Ørstavik, tr. Martin Aitken, published by Archipelago Books
2. Jan-18 Aranyak: Of the Forest by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, tr. Rimli Bhattacharya, published by Seagull Books
1. Dec-17 The Lime Tree by César Aira, tr. Chris Andrews, published by And Other Stories
Zahia Rahmani's 2005 Muselman, Roman was the second in a loose trilogy of novels about the dispossessed. In 2019, it has been translated from French into English by Matthew Reeck (who rather impressively also translates from Hindi, Korean, and Urdu) and published by Deep Vellum.
It is also the latest book from the highly-recommended Asymptote Book Club, whose introduction to the book does it more justice than my review can:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
"Muslim": A Novel is a heady mixture of auto-fiction, an essay on language and religion, a metaphorical story of the detention of Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 and the US incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, and of tales drawn from French fairy stories (e.g. Perrault's Little Poucet), the oral myths of her Berber childhood and from the Koran, all in just 100 pages.
Like the author, the narrator was born in 1962, in Kabylie in Algeria, her mother from a berber tribe and her father a harki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harki), fighting on the losing side of the French in the Algerian war of independence, that ended the same year. When he escapes from prison in 1967, the family free to France.
Coming to France was my father's fault. He'd been banished from Algeria. Banished like so many others had been, and like so many more would be. Banished, stripped of a name, a soldier of the colonial army, a traitor to his country. They were the banished, the silent participants of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Iraq and elsewhere, the comrades of the losers of these wars, waiting to drag their shame home.
And there the narrator finds herself losing her first language, the aural language Tamazight, one she struggles to relearn (I lived in a language that had no primer) in the same way she learns French at school:
One night, I lost my language. My mother tongue. I was hardly five years old, and I'd lived in France for only a few weeks. I no longer spoke my language, a spoken language, a language of fairy tales, of ogres and legends. One night, a night of dreams and nightmares, gave me over to another language, that of Europe. I became hers one night, that night when, sleeping, I met an army of elephants.
The reference to the elephants a dream of her as a child that she later realises echoes The Night of the Elephants:
For Muslims, the Night of the Elephant marks the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. It was, the tradition says, when the army of Abraha, King of the Abyssinians, attacked Mecca. It is said that they were mounted on elephants procured from unknown parts, and upon these animals they set out to destroy the town. Seeing the animals, the city's people became scared. The elephants chased them into the mountains. But it was due to divine grace that thousands upon thousands of birds arrived to pelt the elephants with stones. The army fell into disarray. It was a debacle. The soldiers died of infections. And the town, now holy, was saved. That night, there, the first Muslim was born.
The novel muses on relationship between the language of her childhood and the aural teachings of Islam, a religion she sees as rooted in Judiasm, and how under pan-Arabism she feels forced into one identity, 'Muslim”, and one language, Arabic.
I was born into the world in a minor language. A language that was passed on orally, a language that was never read. We called it Tamazight. A Berber language that throughout the incursions of history was guarded tightly by its people for what it knew. For the people of the Atlas Mountains, in the regions of Kabylie, in the Aures Mountains, where the Mozabites and Tuareg lived, it was in their language and in their spoken traditions that Islam was introduced.
"Speak the word, speak the word, speak the word," the Archangel Gabriel said to Muhammad. "Speak what I tell you, and people will come to you." And it is said that the voice that came from on high spoke in Arabic to Muhammad in poetry. It is said that anyone who hears it will be moved. And was it for this reason that his wife and his nearest friends understood that he was no ordinary man? They listened to him, and they spread the word. And so the people came to Muhammad. They came and came, and more came after that. He told them, "We're all the children of Abraham."
Whether out of affection or necessity, Muhammad liked to listen to the stories of the Jewish people, a community that modeled faithfulness to God, which he respected. He wanted to listen to all of the stories—about Noah and his sons, about Loth and his brothers, about Isaac, Sarah, and Ishmael, about Pharaoh, Moses, and Aaron, about Job and his miseries, about Elijah, about Salomon, about Jacob and David. He wanted to hear about their rules for daily life, which he would use to make his own. And they translated these from Hebrew into his language. It was said that Zayd, the youngest of his scribes, had been Jewish. He still went to Jewish school. And, as for the second, Ubayy, it is said that he was a rabbi before his conversion. Upon the death of the Prophet, it was up to them to keep alive his memory, his grandeur, and his glory. They knew his verses by heart. A little while later, they passed the knowledge on to Uthman, the Caliph and the new guide of the community. With the gift of their manuscripts, with the writing out of the Book, they became bound to it. To this word, they added other stories, which they had heard or which had come to them by other means. Perhaps they omitted some stories as well. What exactly constitutes the divine word will be argued over forever, it is said, beneath the watchful eye of God and his Prophet. They made the Quran, the holy book of "Muslims." And Arabic, as a language, was reborn. It would be the language of this adventure. The language of Islam.
And in France she finds herself also put into the same categories - an exile, an immigrant, an Arab, a Berber, a Muslim, or a foreigner, but after she suffers a mental
She wishes to escape from this and travels to 'the desert', where after wandering for some time, she is caught by soldiers and imprisoned, and labelled once again "a Muslim" (I believe in the French original, the author uses the male pronoun to emphasise her rejection of the label). This is where the story becomes more metaphorical - exactly where she is, and who captures her is never stated, and references to desert storms if anything hark back to the first Gulf War, although what is described - the capture, interrogation, rendition to another country, even an orange jumpsuit, situate the book more in the post 9/11 world:
I left, I wanted to live elsewhere, and to hold up my humble head with dignity. I wanted a life. Another life. They wouldn't be able to hunt me down, if I was alone. And I found that life. It lasted only a few years.
Then they found me again. They stopped me. They questioned me. And my identity was again at stake. "What are you doing here?" they asked. "Where're you from?"
"A country where I couldn't remain."
Since then, I've been waiting in this camp.
..
How have I lived these past days? Everyone wants me, everyone condemns me. "Are you one of theirs?" "No." "Are you one of ours?" "No." Then you're a Muslim!
Overall, an impressive novel, albeit one at times whose metaphorical nature and non-linearity (the story is presented rather differently from the order laid out above, and it took me around 50 pages to really appreciate how it all hung together) detracted at times from the power of what is described.
3.5 stars
-------------------------------------------------------
This is the latest from the excellent Asymptote Book Club (https://www.asymptotejournal.com/book...), which I would highly recommend: the Asymptote Journal team select a piece of world literature each month from some of the leading independent presses in Canada, the US, and the UK.
And the list of books to date:
15. Feb-19 “Muslim”: A Novel by Zahia Rahmani. tr. Matthew Reeck, published by Deep Vellum
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... )
14. Jan-19 Night School: A Reader for Grownups by Zsófia Bán, tr. Jim Tucker, published by Open Letter
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
13. Dec-18 The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Jordan Stump, published by Archipelago Books
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
12. Nov-18 Hotel Tito, by Ivana Simić Bodrožić, tr. Ellen Elias-Bursać, published by Seven Stories Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
11. Oct-18 Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan tr. Brendan Freely and Yelda Türedi, published by Europa Editions
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
10. Sep-18 Moving Parts by Prabda Yoon, tr. Mui Poopoksakul , published by Tilted Axis Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
9. Aug-18 Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussen, tr. Emma Ramadan, published by Deep Vellum
8. Jul-18 I Didn't Talk by Beatriz Bracher, tr. Adam Morris. published by New Directions
7. Jun-18 The Tidings of the Trees by Wolfgang Hilbig, tr. Isabel Fargo Cole, published by Two Lines Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
6. May-18 The Chilli Bean Paste Clan by Yan Ge, tr. Nicky Harmon, published by Balestier Press
5. Apr-18 Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf, tr. Mara Faye Letham, published by And Other Stories
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
4. Mar-18 Trick by Dominico Starnone tr. Jhumpa Lahiri, published by Europa Editions
3. Feb-18 Love by Hanne Ørstavik, tr. Martin Aitken, published by Archipelago Books
2. Jan-18 Aranyak: Of the Forest by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, tr. Rimli Bhattacharya, published by Seagull Books
1. Dec-17 The Lime Tree by César Aira, tr. Chris Andrews, published by And Other Stories
December 8, 2025
This is a deeply unsettling, claustrophobic take on the downstream e/affects of colonialism, cultural erasure, and surveillance, tonally just a half-inch into the speculative. Rahmani blends autofiction, personal essay, and prose poetry to create the narrative of a semi-fictional protagonist stripped of her name and her freedom while incarcerated in France. From this site of incarceration –– for the crime of being "Muslim," a totalizing identity forcibly assigned to her both by French colonizers and Arabizing forces in her ancestral home, Algeria –– she looks back on a life caught between two worlds (the French and the Algerian), neither of which account for the full extent of her cultural and familial genealogy.
This book is relentless, hypnotic, and recursive, with tight, forceful sentences and overt political references. This works well: "Muslim," as its title indicates, is not a subtle novel, nor should it be. It is an absolute skewering of empire and a clear-eyed look at what happens (can/will happen) to those who dissent.
This book is relentless, hypnotic, and recursive, with tight, forceful sentences and overt political references. This works well: "Muslim," as its title indicates, is not a subtle novel, nor should it be. It is an absolute skewering of empire and a clear-eyed look at what happens (can/will happen) to those who dissent.
January 13, 2024
"Muslim" is a book that I ran across by accident while curating a selection of Muslim writers for a display at the bookstore. Which, in the most ironic way, plays into the central tenet of Rahmani's novel: that "Muslim" is used as a monolith, a label that erases all nuance. The narrator weaves back and forth between exploring her childhood as an immigrant from Algeria in France, losing and then finding her childhood Berber language, ruminating on the development of Islam, and contemplating the bleakness of an unnamed camp, in an unnamed location of the world, where the narrator has been taken captive because she is a "Muslim" and is therefore suspect of all manner of unnamable things.
The original French edition was published in 2005, so several later references in the book are very directly pointing to the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq at that time. I wonder how the book would be similar or different had Rahmani written the book in 2015.
The original French edition was published in 2005, so several later references in the book are very directly pointing to the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq at that time. I wonder how the book would be similar or different had Rahmani written the book in 2015.
July 15, 2019
Finally a book about the existential crises I’ve been having for most of my life.
Finally a book about “Muslim” and its dangers as a monolith; about denying the spectrums of people; about being shunned from your own ‘pack,’ only to be dehumanized in another.
I doubt that in the French version, one would see the traces of Cixous much more clearer.
“They had just one Name. One Name. And no one suspected the evil inside them, no one bore witness to this evil inside them, the thing that they were referring to when they said, ‘we don’t want them, we don’t want others, not him, not her, not them.’ And this always brought to mind the scenes of trains leaving for Poland.”
Finally a book about “Muslim” and its dangers as a monolith; about denying the spectrums of people; about being shunned from your own ‘pack,’ only to be dehumanized in another.
I doubt that in the French version, one would see the traces of Cixous much more clearer.
“They had just one Name. One Name. And no one suspected the evil inside them, no one bore witness to this evil inside them, the thing that they were referring to when they said, ‘we don’t want them, we don’t want others, not him, not her, not them.’ And this always brought to mind the scenes of trains leaving for Poland.”
July 6, 2019
** Books 69 - 2019 **
3,7 of 5 stars!
Why this books is really saaaad?? why we cannot live without borderies of religion, country and accusations? I feel really depressed when reading this books especially most of it about an heart voice from an women who just wanna be a wanderer without being noticed as one of kinds terorrism part.. The open ending is left me an speechless moment.
Thankyou Bookmate!
3,7 of 5 stars!
Why this books is really saaaad?? why we cannot live without borderies of religion, country and accusations? I feel really depressed when reading this books especially most of it about an heart voice from an women who just wanna be a wanderer without being noticed as one of kinds terorrism part.. The open ending is left me an speechless moment.
Thankyou Bookmate!
July 27, 2019
A love letter to us: the outcasts, the hyphenated "others," those who have lost tongues and gained dialects. Zahia Rahmani speaks to the religious fairy tales of my girlhood, the Muslim lore we listened to while learning the Arabic alphabet. "Muslim" challenges the borders of genre, much like Rahmani pushes up against the boundaries of multiple, overlapping identities, investigating imposed definitions and complicating what it means to be colonized, woman, Muslim.
September 20, 2019
There were moments where I really appreciated the writing style but this just isn’t a book for me. There were too many different types of writing going on and no real story. Which works in poetry but this was presented as some kind of novel/ ... I don’t know. I appreciate it somewhat for what it was but not for me.
July 8, 2019
A very well written fantasy novella....not a novel.
. An academic creatives a narrative voice for the generalized pain and horror of displacement and war. Her narrative voice lashes out at the other, be it unnamed westerners or Arabs. She wants place, identity and comfort, the privilege of a life free from the categorization imposed by others. Then she wanders East to seek its antithesis. Like some sort of fellow suffering sojourner in a refugee camp. In the 80s, 90s, 00s or now?
Did you know they find fossil whales in the desert?
. An academic creatives a narrative voice for the generalized pain and horror of displacement and war. Her narrative voice lashes out at the other, be it unnamed westerners or Arabs. She wants place, identity and comfort, the privilege of a life free from the categorization imposed by others. Then she wanders East to seek its antithesis. Like some sort of fellow suffering sojourner in a refugee camp. In the 80s, 90s, 00s or now?
Did you know they find fossil whales in the desert?
February 16, 2022
There was a bit of a disconnect for me with the characters and the writing style. For most of the book it felt chaotic and I was unsure of what was happening. The last part of the book was an important story about the deconstruction of languages and losing your mother language and had beautiful language. I wanted to like this more than I did.
April 25, 2019
This is one of those books that even though I couldn’t necessarily tell you what it was about, I could still tell you how it affected me.
And I’m glad to have listened to Zahia Rahmani for the hour or so it took to read this book.
And I’m glad to have listened to Zahia Rahmani for the hour or so it took to read this book.
July 21, 2019
Maybe the content was just too sophisticated for me. Couldn’t finish it. I need a story and this one was so esoteric that I just couldn’t stay with it. I’m sure there’s an audience for this book but I’m not in it.
July 25, 2020
I actually did not finish it. I could not. I just could not relate with the book. It is translated from French, there is a possibilty that the translation does not “fully covered” the original version a.k.a it is a bad translation. Or my English is worse than I thought.
June 5, 2019
“‘If you await the real,’ the soothsayer said, ‘it’s because it’s already shown you what it is’ — What foolishness that the engines of war ignore the force they’re trying to mime.”
April 12, 2023
Assez désarçoné par ce livre qui traite des amalgames qui existent sur l'identité des musulmans, au point de désorienter les musulmans eux-mêmes ! Adoré les deux premières parties, l'audace globale du projet, le souffle poétique du texte, mais je me suis senti déçu et noyé par les 2 dernières parties qui sont très elliptiques, et accouchent d'une souris. A relire peut-être après avoir lu Mose, dans le bon ordre.
L'image de la nuit des éléphants, celle de la naissance du premier musulman (Mahomet) est vraiment saisissante et structure le livre.
Citation : Je suis né dans dans une langue mineure pour surgir d'un nulle-part lointain qui ne me voulait pas. Et une langue sans texte ça se rive, ça s'accroche et se soude au corps. En ces temps de solitude et d'abandon, c'est d'elle que je tire ce qu'il me faut pour vivre.
L'image de la nuit des éléphants, celle de la naissance du premier musulman (Mahomet) est vraiment saisissante et structure le livre.
Citation : Je suis né dans dans une langue mineure pour surgir d'un nulle-part lointain qui ne me voulait pas. Et une langue sans texte ça se rive, ça s'accroche et se soude au corps. En ces temps de solitude et d'abandon, c'est d'elle que je tire ce qu'il me faut pour vivre.
March 9, 2024
Første boken er inntatt. Den var litt for poetisk for min smak. Men den har ett unikt viktig budskap som trer skikkelig godt frem på slutten, så den er verdt å ta seg en reise gjennom. Den er liten og kjapp å innta!
January 2, 2021
I read this book after it was awarded the Albertine Book Prize in 2020. It is a very short text with five chapters or “acts.” It is called “a novel” in its subtitle, but actually it does not have a plot. An unnamed woman finds herself in a prison camp in the desert: that’s the underlying framework. But the acts are about the woman’s origins, childhood memories, immigration to a colonizing country (France), the loss of her native tongue (Berber), and her difficulties in getting others to understand her multifaceted identity. These memories or statements seem to be recounted all by the female character, though there is little sense of time or chronology. Living as a muslim in any part of the world has its challenges, and the woman is often questioned and asked about her “motives,” even when she is living simply, writing and reading and tending her garden: in other words, minding her own business. When one is a Muslim, even minding one’s own business is considered suspect. Written in 2005 and inspired by events during Operation Desert Storm, the text is a strong critique of the West and its long history of abuses against Muslims as well as other groups. Towards the end of the book, there is a personal reference: it is noted that the polytheistic religions called the God of the Jews and the Christians “Rahman,” or “The Merciful.” The woman states that “This name, which is also my name, spread.” So while I do not believe the author was in a desert prison camp, I do think that the book has the feel of a memoir of sorts. The book reminds us that so much of our identity revolves around a name.
January 9, 2022
Review available on shakespearenspice.
A short yet impactful read, “Muslim”: A Novel, looks at the myriad of meanings around the term, "Muslim." As stated in the synopsis, this is a genre-bending little novella that allows us to glimpse into the life of an Algerian woman trapped in a camp and weary of the accusations hurled against the Name.
I quite enjoyed this little bit of a thing for what it was. I don't particularly like narratives full of meanderings but I found the queries posed in this novel engaging. There are times when even my inability of focus on one thing at a time is defeated by a captivating journey into the deep crevices of human history.
Although there are periodical markers noted in the novel, the narrative structure feels obscure. There are echoes of historical memory that ripple along the narrator's thoughts but it does feel rather timeless. And in that, it is enthralling to read. From one page to next, one moves through the pages without feeling the weight of time or plot. Tension remains expertly sustained. Truly, “Muslim”: A Novel is an impressive poetic monologue.
A short yet impactful read, “Muslim”: A Novel, looks at the myriad of meanings around the term, "Muslim." As stated in the synopsis, this is a genre-bending little novella that allows us to glimpse into the life of an Algerian woman trapped in a camp and weary of the accusations hurled against the Name.
I quite enjoyed this little bit of a thing for what it was. I don't particularly like narratives full of meanderings but I found the queries posed in this novel engaging. There are times when even my inability of focus on one thing at a time is defeated by a captivating journey into the deep crevices of human history.
Although there are periodical markers noted in the novel, the narrative structure feels obscure. There are echoes of historical memory that ripple along the narrator's thoughts but it does feel rather timeless. And in that, it is enthralling to read. From one page to next, one moves through the pages without feeling the weight of time or plot. Tension remains expertly sustained. Truly, “Muslim”: A Novel is an impressive poetic monologue.
August 5, 2019
Quick Review: Heady and powerful meditation about the dangers of monolithic othering - the erasure of self, language, and identity and the feeling of in-betweenness in a mixture of (autobiographically-inspired) fiction/religious and folk story/and critique of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan...curious as to how this book would have been written now, in 2019. Powerful, timely, and highly recommended reading.
December 7, 2020
"I wouldn’t be just an exile, an immigrant, an Arab, a Berber, a Muslim, or a foreigner, but something more. Despite all they might do to force me back into these categories, I wouldn’t return to these places. I would strive to find in these words whatever they had of the universal, of the beautiful, of the human, and of the sublime. "
September 22, 2019
Found it pretty well written. A totally new experience. The novel brings an abstract tale of a protagonist trying to grow in their identity as a “Muslim”. The dots connect bits of Islamic history and the narrator’s personal memorabilia as a Muslim in France.
January 17, 2021
In this sparse series of stories the author expresses the anger of being viewed as an outsider in both her native land, and her adopted homeland. She uses allegory to highlight how religion can be twisted, and stereotypes can lead one to be a stranger in one’s own land.
Read
May 22, 2021Devastating. My mother tongue refuses to die also.
'Then they found me again. They stopped me. They questioned me. And my identity was again at stake. "What are you doing here?" they asked. "Where're you from?"
"A country where I couldn't remain."'
'Then they found me again. They stopped me. They questioned me. And my identity was again at stake. "What are you doing here?" they asked. "Where're you from?"
"A country where I couldn't remain."'
September 12, 2019
I liked the writing but didn’t understand much of what was going on. Tried looking her up after I finished to get better context but didn’t find much relevant to this story. Very short read.
October 17, 2019
A beautiful, brilliant, intricately woven book about memory and identity that remains relevant to this day.
Read
July 4, 2023I liked Act 3 the best.
August 6, 2023
Wish there was more of it
January 16, 2025
Accidental but destined in truth"'"
August 7, 2025
Introduces some thought provoking questions on the power of naming and identity. Also a helpful survey of French Algerian relations to those less familiar with that history.
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