Salvation Army (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.72 (973 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1584350709 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 144 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-23 |
| Language | : | French |
DESCRIPTION:
Taia has an unusual gift Wonderful story. Read it. Taia has a true gift for ensuring his reader lives the moment.. ""Where does it come from, the darkness of this world?"" according to Kevin Killian. I came to this book under the spell of Alistair McCartney's persuasive review in a recent issue of LAMBDA BOOK REPORT. (Part of it is reproduced above.) He had me all excited. And then when I got the book I turned to Edmund White's enthusiastic preface and it was even more enthusiastic than what Alistair had written. But nevertheless, when I finally turned to Taia's text I found a different book entirely than the one the two great novelists had described to me. Were we all blind men, and SALVATION ARMY the elephant in the parable? Yea, I think we are.McCartney looks at the book as a version of the coming-out novel that was once a staple of ga. Between a rock and a hard place "Salvation Army" by Abdellah Taia is not a complicated on the surface. It tells the story of a young and naive gay Moroccan who grows up in large family and later comes to Europe in the pursuit of sexual freedom. When his lover does not show up at the airport to pick him up, he is forced to seek shelter at the Salvation Army (and therefore the title).Right? Not really. It is not your average coming out story. Not at all. Taia puts together an amazingly sobering story about growing up in a culture in which your reality is not considered. He is love with his brother and the brother may not even notice. The very fact of having eleven siblings ca
Though Moroccan, he has lived in Paris for the last eight years. He also appeared in Rémi Lange's 2004 film Tarik el Hob (released in English as The Road to Love).. Abdellah Taïa (b. 1973) is the first openly gay autobiographical writer published in Morocco. He is the author of Mon Maroc and Le rouge du tarbouche, both translated into Dutch and Spanish
The arrival of Salvation Army (published in French in 2006) in English will be welcomed by an American audience already familiar with a growing cadre of talented Arab writers working in French (including Muhammad Dib, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Katib Yasin).. Recently hailed by his native country's press as "the first Moroccan to have the courage to publicly assert his difference," Taïa, through his calmly transgressive work, has "outed" himself as "the only gay man" in a country whose theocratic law still de
But the story feels haphazard, and the narrative hinges on a string of taboo-breaking accounts of Taïa's amorous encounters, from his incestuous desire for his older brother to his troubled first love, then a threesome, then a random encounter in a public toilet. For all its frank sexuality and candor, the novel feels canned and unconvincing. . As a young adult, he falls for an older man who introduces him to Europe and the possibility of leaving home and its repressive social mores behind. All rights reserved. From Publishers Weekly Taïa's slim and disjointed autobiographical coming-of-age story begins in poverty in Sal