Jelloun, Tahar Ben - Kenneth Fleurant (review date May 1996)

Kenneth Fleurant (review date May 1996)

SOURCE: Fleurant, Kenneth. Review of Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. French Review 69, no. 6 (May 1996): 1054-55.

[In the following review, Fleurant praises Ben Jelloun's focus on complex gender relations in Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier, noting that Ben Jelloun is “a master of short fiction.”]

Although best known for his novels and poetry, Ben Jelloun is a master of short fiction. At first glance, Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier looks like an anthology. It is comprised of twenty-one short stories, twelve of which have been previously published since 1973. However, the obvious care the author and his editors have taken in organizing the stories around a unifying theme gives this text a feeling of wholeness and continuity. These are stories about love, and, taken together, they reveal the complexity of affective relations...

[The entire page is 651 words long]

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