2.5
Zabor, or The Psalms
ByPublisher Description
Library Journal: Best World Literature of the Year
A fable, parable, and confession, the second novel from the acclaimed author of The Meursault Investigation pays homage to the essential need for fiction and to the freedom from tradition afforded by an adopted language.
Having lost his mother and been shunned by his father, Zabor grows up in the company of books, which teach him a new language. Ever since he can remember, he has been convinced that he has a gift: if he writes, he will stave off death; those captured in the sentences of his notebooks will live longer. Like a kind of inverted Scheherazade saving his fellow men, he experiments night after night with the delirious power of the imagination.
Then, one night, his estranged half brother and the other relatives who would disown him come knocking at the door: his father is going to die and perhaps only Zabor is capable of delaying that fateful moment. Sitting next to the father who has ostracized him, the son writes compulsively, retracing an existence characterized by strangeness, abandonment, and humiliation, but also by wondrous encounters with fictional worlds that he alone in the entire village can access.
A fable, parable, and confession, the second novel from the acclaimed author of The Meursault Investigation pays homage to the essential need for fiction and to the freedom from tradition afforded by an adopted language.
Having lost his mother and been shunned by his father, Zabor grows up in the company of books, which teach him a new language. Ever since he can remember, he has been convinced that he has a gift: if he writes, he will stave off death; those captured in the sentences of his notebooks will live longer. Like a kind of inverted Scheherazade saving his fellow men, he experiments night after night with the delirious power of the imagination.
Then, one night, his estranged half brother and the other relatives who would disown him come knocking at the door: his father is going to die and perhaps only Zabor is capable of delaying that fateful moment. Sitting next to the father who has ostracized him, the son writes compulsively, retracing an existence characterized by strangeness, abandonment, and humiliation, but also by wondrous encounters with fictional worlds that he alone in the entire village can access.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities4 Reviews
2.5
Pam
Created 5 months agoShare
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DinnerForThree
Created about 1 year agoShare
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magicandmystery
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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“This book will NOT be for everyone. It is quite highbrow and ostentatious to the point of being almost incomprehensible. It’s been awhile since I have read a book in translation and I think I definitely missed some of the significance in this one because of not knowing the language and/or culture.
That being said if you can power through there is a really powerful coming of age story about a boy abandoned by his father and left with an aunt. His physical, emotional and mental challenges are substantial and he uses literature and the written world to hide from his reality.
This book is basically a long soliloquy on the power of the written word to extend someone’s life beyond their true life in the form of memories and stories.
There is also subtle commentary about the colonized, the impact of trauma on a person and the plight of women in the Muslim world.
It was A LOT and I likely would not have powered through had it not been a book I read for my A to Z book challenge. I am not mad to have completed it but I will not pick this book up again nor recommend it for most readers.”
Jeremyrunamok
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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About Kamel Daoud
Kamel Daoud is an Algerian journalist based in Oran, where he writes for the Quotidien d’Oran—the third largest French-language Algerian newspaper. He contributes a weekly column to Le Point, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, Libération, Le Monde, and Courrier International, among others. His debut novel, The Meursault Investigation (Other Press, 2015), was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt and winner of the Prix François Mauriac and the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie. It was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, Time Magazine, Financial Times, and Publishers Weekly.
Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying, Kamel Daoud’s Zabor, or The Psalms, and Barbara Molinard’s Panics.
Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying, Kamel Daoud’s Zabor, or The Psalms, and Barbara Molinard’s Panics.
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