Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Jelloun, Tahar Ben - Marie Fayad (essay date December 1993)

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Marie Fayad (essay date December 1993)

SOURCE: Fayad, Marie. “Borges in Tahar Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable: Beyond Intertextuality.” French Review 67, no. 2 (December 1993): 291-99.

[In the following essay, Fayad traces the influence of Argentinian author Jorge-Luis Borges in Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable and argues that the novel's “blind troubadour” character is modelled after Borges.]

Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable is, if not a fantastic tale, at least a highly enigmatic novel.¹ In it we are confronted with the confused and confusing identities of the hero/heroine, those of the storytellers, and the subsequent variety and ambiguity in endings given by those multiple storytellers. In certain parts of the novel one no longer knows whether the storyteller is reading from a diary or pretending that he is; sometimes we wonder whether the storyteller and the hero/heroine are...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Jean-Louise Thatcher (review date summer 1988)
   2. Robin Buss (review date 27 January-2 February 1989)
   3. Adam Zameenzad (review date 19 November 1989)
   4. Mustapha Marrouchi (essay date winter 1990)
   5. Robin Buss (review date 15 June 1990)
   6. Mildred Mortimer (review date winter 1991)
   7. Odile Cazenave (essay date February 1991)
   8. Richard Eder (review date 11 April 1991)
   9. Tahar Ben Jelloun and Thomas Spear (interview date 25 May 1991)
   10. Aamer Hussein (review date 21 June 1991)
   11. Eric Sellin (review date autumn 1992)
   12. Danielle Chavy Cooper (review date spring 1993)
   13. John D. Erickson (essay date spring 1993)
   14. Marie Fayad (essay date December 1993)
   15. Danielle Chavy Cooper (review date autumn 1994)
   16. Brinda Mehta (essay date October 1994)
   17. James Campbell (review date 16 December 1994)
   18. Nada Elia (review date autumn 1995)
   19. Richard Eder (review date 19 October 1995)
   20. Allen Hibbard (review date spring 1996)
   21. Ramzi M. Salti (review date spring 1996)
   22. Kenneth Fleurant (review date May 1996)
   23. Eric Sellin (review date autumn 1998)
   24. Tahar Ben Jelloun and Shusha Guppy (interview date fall 1999)
   25. Eric Sellin (review date summer 2000)
   26. Michael Brett (review date 4 August 2000)
   27. Jamal Mahjoub (review date 17 August 2001)
   28. Publishers Weekly (review date 4 March 2002)
   29. Ziauddin Sardar (review date 17 February 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright