SpaceCadet
Quiet Reader
This novel was originally published as al-Majous in 1990-91. Considering al-Koni’s large body of work, it can be said to have been written during the first half of his writing career.
It was translated to German as Die Mager and thus published in 2001. That same year the book was awarded the Swiss State Prize.
The first attempt at translating it to English was done by Elliott Colla. The Animists was due to be published in 2010 but Colla had to interrupt his work and up until now, his translation has not been published.
William Hutchins’ translation to English The Fetishists was published in 2018.
I read this novel in its French translation by Philippe Vigreux, which was published in 2005 as Les Mages.
Often considered to be Ibrahim al-Koni’s masterpiece, The Fetishists is a big chunk of a novel. Built around a rather simple core story, it is wrapped in a bunch of layers or sub-stories, which are revealed, one by one, as well as being slowly revealing.
First you meet this group of Berber nomads whom, somewhere in the south west region of what is today’s Libya, are encamped near a well. A caravan comes around and they ask permission to stay there for a while, at least until the ghibli, the heavy southern wind that they are trying to flee, dies down. Of course, things are not going to happen as expected.
Next to that, and connected with that story, are the sub-stories which are telling us more about those people, about nomadic life, and beliefs and legends, and about the desert, etc.
But overall it’s the way it is done and told, in a quite original/dismaying and at times poetical fashion, and it’s what it says to us about freedom and about human nature and about life, that makes this novel both singular and fascinating.
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EDIT: for more discussions you might want to visit the following thread
It was translated to German as Die Mager and thus published in 2001. That same year the book was awarded the Swiss State Prize.
The first attempt at translating it to English was done by Elliott Colla. The Animists was due to be published in 2010 but Colla had to interrupt his work and up until now, his translation has not been published.
William Hutchins’ translation to English The Fetishists was published in 2018.
I read this novel in its French translation by Philippe Vigreux, which was published in 2005 as Les Mages.
Often considered to be Ibrahim al-Koni’s masterpiece, The Fetishists is a big chunk of a novel. Built around a rather simple core story, it is wrapped in a bunch of layers or sub-stories, which are revealed, one by one, as well as being slowly revealing.
First you meet this group of Berber nomads whom, somewhere in the south west region of what is today’s Libya, are encamped near a well. A caravan comes around and they ask permission to stay there for a while, at least until the ghibli, the heavy southern wind that they are trying to flee, dies down. Of course, things are not going to happen as expected.
Next to that, and connected with that story, are the sub-stories which are telling us more about those people, about nomadic life, and beliefs and legends, and about the desert, etc.
But overall it’s the way it is done and told, in a quite original/dismaying and at times poetical fashion, and it’s what it says to us about freedom and about human nature and about life, that makes this novel both singular and fascinating.
*
EDIT: for more discussions you might want to visit the following thread
Ibrahim al-Koni
A handful of facts, stolen from Wikipedia: Ibrahim Al-Koni (sometimes translated as Ibrāhīm Kūnī) is a Libyan writer and one of the most prolific Arabic novelists. Born in 1948 in Fezzan Region, Ibrahim al-Koni was brought up on the tradition of the Tuareg, popularly known as "the veiled men"...
www.worldliteratureforum.com
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