6.8 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 2008 | 3.4/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar The Body Hunter, A thousand morons, Mirèio | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The last patriarch (L'últim patriarca) is a novel written by Najat The Hachmi in 2008 and published in Catalonia by Editorial Planeta It was written in Catalan and shortly after was published in Spanish with the title El último patriarca, by the same publisher. Thanks to the success received, the novel was published in seven different languages. The same year, it obtained the prize Les lletres catalanes Ramon Llull. Najat The Hachmi had appeared a few years before like Catalan author with the essay I also am Catalan of the publishing Column.
Contents
It is a novel where the emigration and exile in a sociolinguistic stage fitting the languages Catalan, Riffian, Spanish and Arabic. The main character, son of the Rif land of Morocco, has to migrate to Catalonia and where later his family will move. His daughter will fix his ideals in the local society more than the one of origin, where will finish feeling more Catalan that no Riffian.
Plot
The novel explains the history of a man, Mimoun Driouch, who lives between two cultures, the Moroccan and the Catalan. The character is characterised by an authoritarian mentality and despotic behaviour. This perspective comes from the view of another character, his daughter, who refuses to submit under the patriarchal impositions of an eccentric man who was bad-mannered because of the women of his family. Mimoun is obsessed by the women without giving them the respect they deserve and less to the ones of his own family that abuses them and humiliates them with the highest contempt. The work can surprise on the one hand by the dramatic situations and by another by touch them of cynical humour that does not leave indifferent to the reader.
Najat The Hachmi
Najat The Hachmi is a Catalan writer born in Nador, in the Rif of Morocco on 2 July 1979. She moved to Vic when she had only eight years old. She studied Arabic philology in the University of Barcelona and presented an informative weekly in the old emisora Catalonia Culture. She writes as she lives, since sometimes the things seem her so odd and incredible, that she needs to put order through a text to find meaning. Her life and work has been key in the society, her perspective of the society is even disturbing. She started writing novels when she was little and in some way it was to her the way to exteriorize her interests.