I had the chance to encounter the nostalgic storytelling of Abdellah Taïa, but until Le Bastion des Larmes - the name of a fortification in Salé, Morocco, erected to counter the cruisaders - I´ve mostly read his books in various translations. Moroccan-born Taïa, who lives in Paris since the 1990s, is a voice in the French-speaking literature from Morocco, many of his books using autobiographical details.
Youssef, currently a teacher in France, returns to his native Salé following the death of his mother. As expected, he is facing fragments of his youth, memories of his opressive and abusive personal experience as a gay man. His return is a juxtaposition of encounters with people and objects, projected into personal journeys, particulary his sisters´, but also fragments of memories of his love interest, turned into a corrupt drug dealer, who made his way through the relationship with an important colonel.
Bastion des Larmes has a concise and evocative prose expressing through both ideas and short encounters the power of words. Through those well chosen words we are empathically brought close to a world mostly in disguise, about destinies broken by the violence of everyday indifference and cruelty. I am sure that will come back soon to this author, probably only in the original French language.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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