4.0
Dune Song
ByPublisher Description
“I came to the Sahara to be buried.”
After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center, Jeehan Nathaar leaves her New York life with her sense of identity fractured and her American dream destroyed. She returns to Morocco to make her home with a family that’s not her own. Healed by their kindness but caught up in their troubles, Jeehan struggles to move beyond the pain and confusion of September 11th. On this desiccated landscape, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, the Dune sings of death, love, and forgiveness.
After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center, Jeehan Nathaar leaves her New York life with her sense of identity fractured and her American dream destroyed. She returns to Morocco to make her home with a family that’s not her own. Healed by their kindness but caught up in their troubles, Jeehan struggles to move beyond the pain and confusion of September 11th. On this desiccated landscape, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, the Dune sings of death, love, and forgiveness.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesDune Song Reviews
4.0
“I have been reading books very quickly recently, but this book forced me to slow down and savor its lyrical storytelling.
As the story evolved, the narrator takes us deeper and deeper into her psyche and how she experiences the world as a Moroccan that lives in the US right after 9/11 and all of the issues she faces and the racism and double standards.
She takes us on this adventure into the Sahara as we meet different characters and the mix of how people view the west and their own beliefs and rituals.
This book is a mixture between a travel novel and a thriller.
A poignant MUST read.
I am so so happy I stumbled on this book. I highlighted and annotated a lot of things in this one because she addresses really important things and also, writes so well.”
“Having the full perspective on this novel I think it’s an interesting dive into the psyche of trauma, displacement, and world travel. The characters somewhat frequently lack action or development and the plot similarly often feels stunted. I find these aspects largely intentional, and functionally effective when they move towards this fragmented narrative idea, but at the same time they leave some room to be desired out of this reading especially for an academic endeavor. I find that it falls so squarely middle of the road that there is enough to go off of for class yet some room left to explore what could have been in a story like the one described here. Perhaps knowing the story of its publication and the way which it travelled from French to US audiences helps to explain that too.”
“This is the story of Jeehan Nathaar. She leaves New York City for her home country of Morocco after the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. As a Muslim American, she was asked constantly why "her people hate Americans so much", and decides she needs to escape. Instead of returning to her parents, she neds up with a family in the desert who try to help her heal and find herself once again.
This book was pretty good. It started out strong - good writing, strong characters, a story that made me want to turn page after page. But soon - the story took a dip and I found myself not enjoying it quite as much as I had in the beginning. Jeehan is an adult but acted frequently like a lost child. And the story - once she was settled with the family in Morocco - wasn't as interesting as I was hoping it would be. Pacing seems to be a problem with the author.
This was better than my first choice of a book for Morocco. And the writing was pretty good as well. I just didn't enjoy the story in the second half of the book as much as the first.”
About Anissa M. Bouziane
Anissa N. Bouziane was born in Tennessee, daughter of a Moroccan father and a French mother. She grew up in Morocco, but returned to the US to attend Wellesley College, and went on to earn an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. The book is rooted in the author's experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers. She now works and teaches in Paris.
Paula Haydar
Paula Haydar is Clinical Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Arkansas. She holds a PhD degree in comparative literature and an M.F.A. degree in literary translation. She has translated numerous novels by contemporary Lebanese, Palestinian, and Jordanian authors. Her translation of Lebanese novelist Jabbour Douaihy’s June Rain was selected as the highly commended runner-up of the 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and also made the Daily Star’s list of Top Middle East Novels of 2014. Her translations of Lebanese authors also include three novels by Elias Khoury (Gates of the City, The Journey of Little Gandhi, and The Kingdom of Strangers) and three novels by Rashid al-Daif (This Side of Innocence , Learning English, and Who’s Afraid of Meryl Streep?). Her translations of novels by Palestinian writers include Sahar Khalifeh’s The End of Spring and Adania Shibli’s Touch (Interlink). Her most recent translation is What Price Paradise by Jordanian writer Jamal Naji.
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