I’m only doing a brief writeup of Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
The core theme is the difficulty of being a woman in an Islamic society, particularly one born into a somewhat liberal home environment within a generally conservative society. A woman could write a pretty good book about this, but Djebar tries to intertwine that thread with one about the French invasion and occupation of Algeria, and another about the narrator’s experiences as a supporter of the Algerian rebels during the war of independence; in fact that main thread about women in Islamic cultures is dropped for a good chunk of the book, so that when it’s reintroduced, you’ve lost the plot, literally.
I also have to question the quality of the translation. Djebar makes a point of saying that she’s writing in French (her second language) and abhors metaphor and florid language, but the translation is full of bizarre and at times fabricated vocabulary – perhaps she’s the Algerian Chabon, but more likely we have a literal translation rather than one that considers the usage patterns of the two languages.
Next up: I’m about 40% through Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses
You read fast. I should become a sportswriter rather than a law student. I’ve been reading “A Well-Paid Slave” for like two months, a chapter every three days or so. I want more reading time.
Who hates Portrait of the Artist?
I hate Joyce in general, but I can see the opposing preference.
Keith: One piece of information I could use in these already very useful reviews is time it took for you to read the book. From what I gather (although our lives are very different) you and I seem to have a similar amount of “free time,” so knowing how long it takes somebody of similar literary tastes (and an identical page-per-minute guideline) would be a great clue as to the density of the prose. Perhaps just a last line of “Reading time: Two weeks (but took two days off because family was in town).”
Loved the first 3/4 of All the pretty horses. Lost me towards the end.