Tahar Ben Jelloun

I got tired of waiting to finish the message so I just hit submit. Sorry.

Anyway, although I was interested enough to read three of his books (after a book store clerk recommended him on the basis of seeing my interest in Paul Bowles), I am a little surprised his writing is held in such high esteem. (Maybe it reads better in French?) It's been about ten years since I've read these books, so I don't remember in much detail what I liked or didn't like, except that there was something about his mix of reality and fantasy and the rather heavy and opaque rhetoric he sometimes used (imitating oral story-telling at times, apparently), that I didn't quite like. I do remember enoying his work more when I was high, because the changes in narrator voice really jumped out at me more than it normally would. But there was something about these books that I found a little unsatisfying.

I also read a good chunk of his rather short introduction to Islam (which I think was either written or translated into English as part of the post-9/11 Islam-related book publishing boom), which didn't seem very useful at all as an intro. to Islam. It's basically Islam as he would like it to be, which I think he even admits at some point.

Still, the book he won this award for relates to secret, literally underground, prisons in Morocco, which has a certain resonance right now for some reason.