April Book Club: Morocco

Join us to read a book from one of the 54 African countries each month.

See past events to catch up on books from Angola, Cameroon, Congo, Algeria, Egypt, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Ghana, Sudan, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Nigeria.

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Book #19 is The Simple Past by Driss Chraibi

The Simple Past came out in Protected content , and both in France and its author’s native Morocco the book caused an explosion of fury.

The protagonist, who shares the author’s name, Driss, comes from a Moroccan family of means, his father a self-made tea merchant, the most devout of Muslims, quick to be provoked and ready to lash out verbally or physically, continually bent on subduing his timid wife and many children to his iron and ever-righteous will. He is known, simply, as the Lord, and Driss, who is in high school, is in full revolt against both him and the French colonial authorities, for whom, as much as for his father, he is no one.

Driss Chraïbi’s classic coming-of-age story is about colonialism, Islam, the subjection of women, and finding, as his novel does, a voice that is as cutting and coruscating as it is original and free.