Böcker av Abdellah Taia

An autobiographical coming-of-age novel by the the "only gay man” in Morocco.An autobiographical novel by turn naïve and cunning, funny and moving, this most recent work by Moroccan expatriate Abdellah Taïa is a major addition to the new French literature emerging from the North African Arabic diaspora. Salvation Army is a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of Taïa's life with complete disclosure—from a childhood bound by family order and latent (homo)sexual tensions in the poor city of Salé, through an adolescence in Tangier charged by the young writer's attraction to his eldest brother, to a disappointing arrival in the Western world to study in Geneva in adulthood. In so doing, Salvation Army manages to burn through the author's first-person singularity to embody the complex mélange of fear and desire projected by Arabs on Western culture. 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 declares homosexuality a crime. The persistence of prejudices on all sides of the Mediterranean and Atlantic makes the translation of Taïa's work both a literary and political event. 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).

An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature"*Paris, summer of 2010. Zahira is a Moroccan prostitute late in her career whose generosity is her way of defying her humiliation and misery. Her friend Aziz, a male prostitute, admires her and emulates her. Aziz is transitioning from his past as a man into the womanhood of his future, and asks Zahira to help him choose a name for himself as a woman. Motjaba is an Iranian revolutionary, a refugee in Paris, a gay man fleeing his country at the end of his rope, who finds refuge for a few days with Zahira. And then there is Allal, Zahira''s first love, who comes to Paris years later to save their love.The world of A Country for Dying is a world of dreamers, of lovers, for whom the price of dreaming is one they must pay with their flesh. Writes Taïa, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people''s future."

Tales of life in North Africa that flirt with strategies of revelation and concealment, by the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco.Tangier is a possessed city, haunted by spirits of different faiths. When we have literature in our blood, in our souls, it's impossible not to be visited by them.—from Another MoroccoIn 2006, Abdellah Taïa returned to his native Morocco to promote the Moroccan release of his second book, Le rouge du tarbouche (The Red of the Fez). During this book tour, he was interviewed by a reporter for the French-Arab journal Tel Quel, who was intrigued by the themes of homosexuality she saw in his writing. Taïa, who had not publically come out and feared the repercussions for himself and his family of doing so in a country where homosexuality continues to be outlawed, nevertheless consented to the interview and subsequent profile, "Homosexuel envers et contre tous” ("Homosexual against All Odds”). This interview made him the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco.Another Morocco collects short stories from Taïa's first two books, Mon Maroc (My Morocco) and Le rouge du tarbouche, both published before this pivotal moment. In these stories, we see a young writer testing the porousness of boundaries, flirting with strategies of revelation and concealment. These are tales of life in a working-class Moroccan family, of a maturing writer's fraught relationship with language and community, and of the many cities and works that have inspired him. With a reverence for the subaltern—for the strength of women and the disenfranchised—these stories speak of humanity and the construction of the self against forces that would invalidate its very existence. Taïa's work is, necessarily, a political gesture.