Le Ring

by Elisabeth Horem

A brokenhearted man leaves behind his familiar Europe to find himself in a desert land equal parts dull and dreamlike, torn between his desire to lose himself in this new country or hide away with the pampered expatriates who reside in a “green zone” known as “the Ring.” When Quentin’s lover announces that she’s leaving him for his brother and moving to America, he replies spontaneously that he too is leaving the but going where? To Tahas , he “a city whose very name sounded exotic.” Following through on this impulse, Quentin soon finds a job exactly where he claimed to be going . . . and with his departure from familiar Europe, finds himself aimless in a desert country equal parts dull and dreamlike, enclosed in “the Ring,” to which the wealthy expatriate community is confined by its own xenophobia. Stifled within this community and alienated without, Quentin must decide what sort of life is worth living—safe and aloof, or engaged with the deprivation and even danger of what lies beyond the Ring.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ring (which was originally published in French in 1994) is the story of a man adrift. At the start of the book, Quentin Corval's lover announces she's leaving him for his brother. They're off to America, where Quentin's brother has landed a teaching job. "I'm leaving too," Quentin says, all bluster (7.) Pressed, he says he's leaving for a city called Tahas, though actually, he had no such plans before: "They would be crossing an ocean, leaving him alone on the nether shore. He couldn't bear the idea, so he had tossed out a city name at random, in order not to be the one left behind" (8).

But having said it, having thought it, Quentin feels compelled to follow through. He'd seen a vague ad in the paper for a job in Tahas, so he applies, gets hired, and sets off. The job, though, remains as vague upon Quentin's arrival as it was in the ad, so he quits on his first day, but, having come to Tahas, stays. He gets a job in the consulate, working with other expatriates, all of whom live and work on the Ring, a circular central road where all foreigners used to be required to live. Most still do, but Quentin is drawn to one who doesn't: he befriends Nina, a woman he meets at a party, a dance teacher who lives in a poorer neighborhood elsewhere. (Tahas, outside the Ring, is a city of "shanties made of corrugated metal and boards," streets that have "few cars" but are "choked with bicycles, donkey carts, and itinerant merchants wheeling their wares" (32, 42).) Quentin wanders, explores, drifts: he takes a vacation to a seaside town at Nina's urging; in Tahas, he drifts through the city:

He walked and walked, turning onto streets at random, sometimes right, sometimes left. He walked through several more or less lower-class neighborhoods he had never visited. One street led to a public garden whose rectangular shape appeared on no map he had seen. It was a small park whose brick-colored paths took up more space than did the lawns. Women were strolling with their young children, showing them the caged monkeys, which seemed to be the local attraction. (45)

When Nina decides to leave Tahas, she asks Quentin about his plans for returning to Europe eventually, and he realizes he doesn't really have any:

He was there, waiting, with no real expectation of anything happening, not even quite sure what this could be, an event, a sign he would recognize when he saw it, upon which he would know that the time had come for him to leave. (86)

Quentin does make a decision: he won't leave Tahas itself immediately, but he will leave his apartment on the Ring. But living outside the Ring means Quentin is removed from his colleagues and peers, which gives him the chance to drift further from comfort and stability. The Ring is short and strange and uneasy, and I'm glad to have read it, even though I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.