Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Jelloun, Tahar Ben - Robin Buss (review date 27 January-2 February 1989)


Jelloun, Tahar Ben - Robin Buss (review date 27 January-2 February 1989)

Robin Buss (review date 27 January-2 February 1989)

SOURCE: Buss, Robin. “Ambiguous from Birth.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4478 (27 January-2 February 1989): 88.

[In the following review, Buss argues that The Sand Child and La Nuit sacrée resist literal interpretations, emphasizing the importance of the “journey” in both works.]

It might be misleading to describe La Nuit sacrée, which won the 1987 Prix Goncourt, as a sequel to The Sand Child, because there is no strict narrative progression from one to the other. But they share a central character whose ambiguous upbringing is the starting-point for both stories. This is the eighth child of a father determined, after seven daughters, to produce a son. “You will be a mother, a true mother”, he told his wife, “you will be a princess, for you will have brought to birth a boy. … It will be named Ahmed—even if it is a girl!”

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