Set in a small village in the North of Africa - Nahbès - Les Prépondérants - The Influence Peddlers, according to the English translation by Teresa Lavender Fagan - by Tunesian author Hédi Kaddour - follows the encounters of an American crew from Hollywood interacting with the locals during the production of a film. They are called Les Prépondérants as applied to a group in a position of economic, social and politic superiority and not simply the Elites because the chosen word gives a better measure of the amount of the discrepancies.
First and foremost, the book is a social novel, which explores on different levels the interactions between those who were born in a position of priviledge and those who haven´t. It is a relatively easy construction, with a clear dynamic, therefore what is interesting is the extent to which the author is exposing various inequalities and civilization shift which is about to happen.
There are some interesting dynamics between characters, of a purely sociological nature and recent reflections on the issue of colonialism, particularly French influence in this part of the world. However, most of the time, I felt like the action does not necessarily takes place at a specific moment of time, as it can easily happen in our times as well. There is a certain feeling of familiarity and mental comfort that does not necessarily make justice to the chosen topic of the novel.
I also felt like that many fragments of the story could have been easily either reduced or eliminated, as they are just filling up the space of the story without necessarily bringing anything new to the story itself. Somehow, the good intentions of the storytelling are lost somewhere in the first quarter of the novel. Which is a pity, because there is a good premise and a good idea and developing it in the 1920s might guarantee a certain distance from the current self-criticism about caste and priviledges. But the momentum was lost in my opinion.
Rating: 2.5 stars
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