Description

Barkahoum and Abraham are a modern day Jewish-Muslim couple in the Algerian capital. In a pizzeria in Algiers' chic district, they tell each other stories, their history and that of their ancestors: Andalusia, North Africa – the expulsion. For centuries, Jews and Muslims lived peacefully side by side, shared common places, and maintained similar customs. Like a ring parable that raises the equality of all mono-theistic religions to a principle, Zaoui, for whom the banishment of the body from public places and the feigned prudery in Muslim society are a thorn in the side, is circumcised according to Jewish-Muslim tradition Link of the unifying ring of the novel. But it is not a novel in the true sense, because, written in the tradition of oriental storytelling, it is a fable as well as a philosophical, political, spiritual and erotic work. In the Arab world The Last Jew of Tamentit as a true scandal novel. Zaoui breaks one taboo after the other simply through his finely researched memory work. He also keeps society in the mirror with topics such as child abuse, homosexuality and slavery.

"In front of the door of our large house, a dozen readers of the Koran had sat down in a semicircle on the ground floor and started reading from Allah's book. Quran verses are read to commemorate the death of a Jew! This is the custom of the residents of our city without borders and hatred.”

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Literature News:

You can't expose the clash of cultures for what it is any more blatantly than Amin Zaoui does: bloody, terrible nonsense! (...) more