{"title":"Abdellah Taïa","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the poignant and evocative works of Abdellah Taïa, one of Morocco's most celebrated contemporary authors. Explore themes of identity, sexuality, and displacement in his compelling novels and essays.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"another-morocco-book-abdellah-taia-9781584351948","title":"Another Morocco","description":"\u003cb\u003eTales of life in North Africa that flirt with strategies of revelation and concealment, by the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eTangier is a possessed city, haunted by spirits of different faiths. When we have literature in our blood, in our souls, it's impossible not to be visited by them.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e-from \u003ci\u003eAnother Morocco\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn 2006, Abdellah Taia returned to his native Morocco to promote the Moroccan release of his second book, \u003ci\u003eLe rouge du tarbouche\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Red of the Fez\u003c\/i\u003e). During this book tour, he was interviewed by a reporter for the French-Arab journal \u003ci\u003eTel Quel\u003c\/i\u003e, who was intrigued by the themes of homosexuality she saw in his writing. Taia, who had not publically come out and feared the repercussions for himself and his family of doing so in a country where homosexuality continues to be outlawed, nevertheless consented to the interview and subsequent profile, \"Homosexuel envers et contre tous\" (\"Homosexual against All Odds\"). This interview made him the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnother Morocco\u003c\/i\u003e collects short stories from Taia's first two books, \u003ci\u003eMon Maroc\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eMy Morocco\u003c\/i\u003e) and \u003ci\u003eLe rouge du tarbouche\u003c\/i\u003e, both published before this pivotal moment. In these stories, we see a young writer testing the porousness of boundaries, flirting with strategies of revelation and concealment. These are tales of life in a working-class Moroccan family, of a maturing writer's fraught relationship with language and community, and of the many cities and works that have inspired him.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWith a reverence for the subaltern-for the strength of women and the disenfranchised-these stories speak of humanity and the construction of the self against forces that would invalidate its very existence. Taia's work is, necessarily, a political gesture.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49560512069905,"sku":"GOR008495249","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735014449425,"sku":"NGR9781584351948","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50484118421777,"sku":"CIN1584351942VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51693729382673,"sku":"CIN1584351942G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1584351942.jpg?v=1751441372"},{"product_id":"salvation-army-book-abdellah-taia-9781584350705","title":"Salvation Army","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn autobiographical coming-of-age novel by the the \"only gay man\" in Morocco.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eAn autobiographical novel by turn naive and cunning, funny and moving, this most recent work by Moroccan expatriate Abdellah Taia is a major addition to the new French literature emerging from the North African Arabic diaspora. \u003ci\u003eSalvation Army\u003c\/i\u003e is a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of Taia's life with complete disclosure-from a childhood bound by family order and latent (homo)sexual tensions in the poor city of Sale, through an adolescence in Tangier charged by the young writer's attraction to his eldest brother, to a disappointing arrival in the Western world to study in Geneva in adulthood. In so doing, \u003ci\u003eSalvation Army\u003c\/i\u003e manages to burn through the author's first-person singularity to embody the complex melange of fear and desire projected by Arabs on Western culture. Recently hailed by his native country's press as \"the first Moroccan to have the courage to publicly assert his difference,\" Taia, through his calmly transgressive work, has \"outed\" himself as \"the only gay man\" in a country whose theocratic law still declares homosexuality a crime. The persistence of prejudices on all sides of the Mediterranean and Atlantic makes the translation of Taia's work both a literary and political event. The arrival of \u003ci\u003eSalvation Army\u003c\/i\u003e (published in French in 2006) in English will be welcomed by an American audience already familiar with a growing cadre of talented Arab writers working in French (including Muhammad Dib, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Katib Yasin).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49570016690449,"sku":"GOR005120640","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49732937187601,"sku":"NGR9781584350705","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50034581340433,"sku":"CIN1584350709G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51417455362321,"sku":"CIN1584350709VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1584350709.jpg?v=1750719971"},{"product_id":"arab-melancholia-book-abdellah-taia-9781584351115","title":"An Arab Melancholia","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn autobiographical portrait of a gay Arab man, living between cultures, seeking an identity through love and writing.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eI had to rediscover who I was. And that's why I left the apartment.... And there I was, right in the heart of the Arab world, a world that never tired of making the same mistakes over and over.... I had no more leniency when it came to the Arab world... None for the Arabs and none for myself. I suddenly saw things with merciless lucidity....\u003cbr\u003e -\u003ci\u003eAn Arab Melancholia\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSale, near Rabat. The mid 1980s. A lower-class teenager is running until he's out of breath. He's running after his dream, his dream to become a movie director. He's running after the Egyptian movie star, Souad Hosni, who's out there somewhere, miles away from this neighborhood-which is a place the teenager both loves and hates, the home at which he is not at home, an environment that will only allow him his identity through the cultural lens of shame and silence. Running is the only way he can stand up to the violence that is his Morocco.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIrresistibly charming, angry, and wry, this autobiographical novel traces the emergence of Abdellah Taia's identity as an openly gay Arab man living between cultures. The book spans twenty years, moving from Sale, to Paris, to Cairo. Part incantation, part polemic, and part love letter, this extraordinary novel creates a new world where the self is effaced by desire and love, and writing is always an act of discovery.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733722702097,"sku":"NGR9781584351115","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49759020613905,"sku":"GOR005529213","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50382435516689,"sku":"CIN158435111XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50986217373969,"sku":"GOR014161054","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/158435111X.jpg?v=1751309969"},{"product_id":"living-in-your-light-book-abdellah-taia-9781644214534","title":"Living in Your Light","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51143518519569,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51143520551185,"sku":"NIN9781644214534","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51607118905617,"sku":"CIN1644214539VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1644214539.jpg?v=1750764120"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-abdellah-taa.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}