From many respects, Des Ailes au Loin (approximatively translated into English as Away on Wings; an official English translation does not exist as for now) reminded me of one of my favorite reads in 2019 - A Woman is No Man. The fate of the four women featured in the beautiful debut by Jadd Hilal are faced with the men´s aggressivity and random outburst of hate.
The women are nevertheless the main characters of the relatively short novel: they are sustaining the family through their heritage, as storyteller and bearers of an identity who is itself undergoing a dramatic shift. Out of their discomfort zones, where there are wars and forced to a refugee status, the ´West´ - specifically France or Switzerland - are the place where nothing happens. It is that normality and out-of-history state of mind that you cannot experience in Lebanon.
I liked the idea of a multi-generational story, with women brought together to express their version of history, because besides being refugees, they were also mothers and wives of men who lost their minds and sometimes also their lives. I also appreciated that the book is more literature than politics, using the politics as a context but not taking the unliterary risk of an ideological bias.
Besides being an author, Jadd Hilal is also a philosopher and maybe this atemporal orientation is the reason why Des Ailes au Loin is more a story of ideas than a political manifesto. I am personally pleased by this literary discovery.
Rating: 3 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment