في انتظار الحياة

The novel spans some four decades of Tunisian history. It begins in the 1970s, when improvised economic policies and a cruel climate impoverish the countryside and push its people to leave, trading, as one voice says, their fathers' poverty for a humiliating one. Its hero is split among many figures, formed by circumstances, relationships and events, and stands for a generation that took on the pain of its people and, through disappointment and defeat, became nihilistic and indifferent to the core. Many voices speak, in the dialects of rural Kasserine in the west and Gabès in the south, in classical Arabic and street slang: mad and mocking, revolutionary and careless, devout and violent, moving between mosques and prison bars.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

261 pages in the original

Genres

Politics, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Tunisia, 1970s onwards

First published

2001 by Adicope

Author's age

36 when first published

ISBN

9789973798138 (original)