حي باب سويقة

The working-class Tunis quarter of Bab Souika frames a portrait of the country in the last years of Bourguiba's rule, when the conflict between the trade union and the government came to a head. Abbas has given years of his life to the union and lives in fear of being sent back to prison and torture. Mahfoudh, once a feared editor-in-chief, ends up buried in the archives with the boy Chafik, while Mustapha exploits his weakness to climb inside the paper and beyond by dishonest means. On one side stand the exploiting bourgeois, Mustapha, Mansour, Daoud, Hassan and Assia, who conspire to dig a tunnel through the quarter; on the other its poor residents, who dream of keeping their square as it was. A crime committed there, which Daoud and Mustapha try to cover up, binds their fates together.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

505 pages in the original

Genres

Politics, Crime (assigned by AI)

Set in

Tunisia, 1980s

First published

2008 by Abdelkader Belhaj Nasr

Author's age

62 when first published

ISBN

9789973006202 (original)