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: "KING OF THE DAY" is not a holiday! Villa Lobos

It's always risky to buy a book from an author that you liked in a first novel. Everything that has been charmed and seduced flies mostly because the number of novelists capable of having a real blast and inspiration without equal, work after work, is more than limited!

I discovered Taïa Abdellah (1) in his novel "A melancholy Arab" this book got "carried" a long time and I kept my impressions and those touching confessions (see my previous article Three Star A. Taïa ). Similarly, close friends whom I recommended this book had a similar emotion.

However, "The day of the King" just published (and which won the Prix de Flore 2010 ...) I was quite bored! Some books you "absorb" literally and capture your full attention to practice in their "universe", some are waterproof, so you slide on the pages like raindrops on a window, it was nice to go back, repeat all playback , nothing happens, it does not work!

Delacroix

The trouble I experienced on several levels. First the story starts with a dream and nightmare is lost in various courses as a river that dries up. Then on writing itself is a compilation of ultra-short sentences which hatch all reading and cause a form of asthma and dry style. Finally slurried up long dialogues that serve only to prolong the story and add nothing for the story is rather confusing ...

It is through a child unfolds the story of this " novel, "I put quotation marks around that word because I'm not sure this is the correct designation, everything seems rather closer to a novella.

Renoir

A nightmare, an absent mother, a father inconsistent, a king who resembles a kind of ogre, a friend that we hate, we love, which is jealous that you took the same dream that could become reality, the killing! And here and there: a man who leaves prison and an amazing portrait of a woman who looks like a slave, because the status of women is still very poor condition in Morocco ...

We feel that between the words the shadow of an oppressive system weighs on all the characters, but nothing is really terminated, there is no breath in this novel that I found for example in "The Village German " of Boualem Sansal (2), which is a book of beauty, strength and emotion at all, and that tells too (well that events in the background are very different) the lives of two young brothers face a story they gradually unravel.

The various ingredients of the book "The day the King" does not give a narrative homogeneous style already indicates that there is no explanation or 'Further investigation is a set of tiny buttons, sentences, and a little dry strict. However, in rare moments style Taïa releases a bit and found the body and flesh, especially when he describes the moment of abandonment and intense sensuality between Omar and Khalid in the forest.

A I think writing Abdellah Taia would be better suited to a collection of short stories, the author could draw some sketches of characters from Morocco, with comical situations and atmospheres still fraught with superstitions and beliefs, rather than to deliver two hundred pages of a "novel" which we know neither the intent nor the interest.

In some releases, this is more like the writer Abdellah Taia brave who dares speak of homosexuality in a country, Morocco, where silence and hypocrisy in this area are more to show!

course like all those committed to the "Freedom" and the recognition of LGBT rights, we can only rejoice to see a man of letters arise as a courageous example clear in a country still immersed in a form of obscurantism, but not Gide, Genet and Cocteau who wants ...

He will have to wait another "novel" for a taste of Taïa a gripping story, backed by a true style and remains at the bottom us as the deep scent of cinnamon, to use an image used by the little "Omar" in a moment of delight ...

( 1) Bibliography of Abdellah Taia:

· My Morocco, narrative, Seguier, 2000 .

• The red tarboosh, novel, Seguier, 2004.

· the salvation army, novel, Seuil, 2006.

· Morocco 1900-1960, a certain look, with Frederic Mitterrand, Actes Sud, 2007.

· A melancholy Arabic novel, Seuil, 2008.

· Letters to a young Moroccan, a collection of letters, Seuil, 2009.

• The King's Day, romance, Seuil, 2010.

(2) Bibliography Boualem Sansal:

• The Oath of the barbarians, Gallimard. First Novel Award 1999, Prix Tropiques 1999. Folio No. 3507.

· The crazy child of the hollow shaft, Gallimard. Michel Dard price. Folio No. 3641.

· Tell me paradise, Gallimard.

· Harraga, Gallimard. Folio No. 4498.

• The Village of German or log Schiller brothers, Gallimard. Grand Prix RTL-Lire 2008, Grand Prix de la Francophonie 2008, Nessim Habif Prize (Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium), Louis Guilloux1 price.