Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

This Blinding Absence of Light

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
8.6
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
8.6
1 Ratings
100
90
81
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Country
  
France

Publication date
  
2000

Pages
  
228

Author
  
Tahar Ben Jelloun

Publisher
  
Éditions du Seuil


Language
  
French

Published in English
  
2002

Originally published
  
2000

Page count
  
228

Translator
  
Linda Coverdale

This Blinding Absence of Light t1gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcQWBQUZDrgOwY0FV

Original title
  
Cette aveuglante absence de lumière

Awards
  
International Dublin Literary Award

Similar
  
Works by Tahar Ben Jelloun, International Dublin Literary Award winners, Other books

This blinding absence of light by tahar ben jelloun


This Blinding Absence of Light (French: Cette aveuglante absence de lumière) is a 2001 novel by the Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. Its narrative is based on the testimony of a former inmate at Tazmamart, a Moroccan secret prison for political prisoners, with extremely harsh conditions.

Contents

Commercial this blinding absence of light


Plot

The plot is based around the events following the second failed coup d'etat against the late Hassan II of Morocco in August 1972. The protagonist is a prisoner in Tazmamart, who, despite being a fictional character, is based on accounts of the prisoners who survived their incarceration there.

The plot focuses on how prisoners who were kept in the extremely harsh conditions of Tazmamart survived, through religious devotion, imagination and communication. The prisoners spent their sentences in cells that are described as being only five foot in height and ten foot long. The prisoners in the novel are not actively tortured, but are fed poorly and live without light.

Reception

Maureen Freely reviewed the book for The Guardian, and wrote that "it defies any expectations you might have built up from [knowing about Tazmamart]. It refuses the well-meaning but tired and ultimately dehumanising conventions of human rights horror journalism; it is not a political tract.... Although it is technically a novel, it is a novel stripped, like its subject, of all life's comforts." Freely wrote about the main character that "there is something Beckettian about his limited environment and studied hopelessness", and compared his literary voice to "the language of Islamic mysticism". Freely ended the review: "It is, despite its dark materials, a joy to read."

The novel received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004.

References

This Blinding Absence of Light Wikipedia