Les lumières de Nejma

Soliman's family handed him as a child to the meddeb, the Koranic teacher, who abused him. He takes his revenge, kills the man and spends his life on the run, a seller of Taiwanese batteries watched by the police. Then he meets Princesse, rejected by her fiancé Nagib when he learned she was not a virgin, who became Nejma, the prostitute. Together the two outcasts head east, gathering a small community that tries to escape the police and the hypocrisy of society: a boxer waiting for years for his ticket to fight Muhammad Ali, Haïfa, a respectable Muslim daughter by day and an acrobat by night. Their stories nest inside one another, in the manner of the Thousand and One Nights, as the road leads towards Jerusalem.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Politics, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Tunisia

First published

2003

Author's age

60 when first published