الكونبطا

Through the voice of a grandfather storyteller, the novel rescues from neglect a fighter whom official histories left out. Kunba, or Ibrahim ben al-Hajj Mohamed, abandons a life of carousing to become a symbol of resistance to the French, of revenge and of honour, fighting for land, people and freedom rather than for any party. It opens with a train carrying him toward the gallows, then goes back to show how his revolt began. The story runs from the Second World War to independence and the disappointments that followed it, with characters from Tunisia, France, Germany, Italy and Malta, and the storyteller plays freely with the order of events, between oral epic and historical record.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, War, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Tunisia, Second World War to after independence

First published

2022 by Meskiliani