Hayet ou La passion d'elles

The book is a letter, addressed to "a dear namesake and friend" who may be the narrator himself, the woman he loves or the Tunisian poet Mnaouar Smadeh. Its writer, Abdallah, sits in a psychiatric hospital and looks back on a past in which he still managed to live by the rules of Tunisian society, mixing present comment with fragments of the old story until dream and reality blur. At its centre is Hayet, whose name means "life" in Arabic. Abdallah, a young schoolteacher, loves her from the age of twenty to sixty. Sid'Pa, at sixty, falls for her too, though he is married to Beya, who in turn has an affair with Abdallah. Around them are the women who light up or darken his life.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

288 pages in the original

Genres

Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Tunisia

First published

2002 by Cérès

Author's age

63 when first published

ISBN

9789973195210 (original)