8.6 /10 1 Votes8.6
Country France Publication date 2000 Pages 228 Publisher Éditions du Seuil | 4.3/5 Barnes & Noble Published in English 2002 Originally published 2000 Page count 228 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original title Cette aveuglante absence de lumière 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
- This blinding absence of light by tahar ben jelloun
- Commercial this blinding absence of light
- Plot
- Reception
- References
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.