Contemporary Literary Criticism | Jelloun, Tahar Ben - Eric Sellin (review date summer 2000)

Eric Sellin (review date summer 2000)

SOURCE: Sellin, Eric. Review of Labyrinthe des sentiments, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. World Literature Today 74, no. 3 (summer 2000): 571.

[In the following review, Sellin describes Labyrinthe des sentiments as a “haunting and unusual book,” asserting that the novel's focus on one main narrative distinguishes it from Ben Jelloun's previous works.]

What is at first perusal a modest text consisting of an amalgam of Tahar Ben Jelloun's usual textual tricks (a highly charged lyrical style; interface between fiction and journalism; dreams, poems, letters, and bits of colloquial Arabic framed by the larger narrative; autobiographical winks at the reader in search of authorial intervention), Labyrinthe des sentiments turns out to be a haunting and unusual book. It is unusual because, unlike most of Ben Jelloun's other works, it has one main narrative with the semblance of a beginning, a...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass