We Never Swim in the Same River Twice

Over thirty-one chapters, three men take turns telling their troubled lives. Salim, an insurance employee in his fifties who loved American literature and jazz in his youth, is overwhelmed by the chaos that follows the fall of Ben Ali in 2011: nightmares and the fear of bearded men pursuing him wreck his marriage and his work. Aziz, a retired postal worker from Bizerte, meets disappointment with black humour and remembers the battle of Bizerte he lived through as a boy of ten, and the French officer's widow who opened him to love and literature. Omran, a thinker who left for Paris after the Bourguiba–Ben Youssef conflict and knew exile in Algeria, East Berlin and Beirut, comes home after thirty years in search of peace.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

302 pages in the original

Genres

Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Tunisia, France, 2010s

First published

2020 by Dar al-Adab

Author's age

70 when first published

ISBN

9789953896687 (original)

9780815611691 (Syracuse University Press, United States)