The Pleasure Marriage
A Novel
Tahar Ben Jelloun author Rita Nezami author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Northwestern University Press
Published:30th Jun '21
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In The Pleasure Marriage, Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the epic story of a romance that explores desire and the intolerance for interracial marriage in Moroccan society. Amir is a prosperous merchant based in Fez, where he has a wife and four children. On one of his annual business trips to Senegal, he enters into a “pleasure marriage”—a temporary union permitted by Islamic law—with the alluring Nabou. Overcome by her passion and sensuality, he falls in love, with repercussions for three generations scarred by racism, immigration, and deportation.
Nabou returns to Fez as Amir’s second wife, weathering the jealous cruelty of Lalla Fatma, his first partner. Isolated within her new home, Nabou gives birth to twin sons, one black and one white, who come of age on the opposite sides of racial, social, and political chasms and who chart vastly different courses. The Pleasure Marriage showcases Ben Jelloun’s mastery of metaphor and lyrical narrative as he continues to take us into the worlds of Moroccan culture through his exquisite language and literary genius.
A novel that confronts the stigma of racism and the taboo topic of racial discrimination in modern Moroccan society. This audacious and provocative story explores the love and affection, as well as the agony and tragic suffering that imbue the intertwined lives of three generations descending from a mixed marriage between Amir, a rich trader from the imperial city of Fez, and Nabou, a woman from Senegal." — Ahmed Idrissi Alami, author of Mutual Othering: Islam, Modernity, and the Politics of Cross-Cultural Encounters in Pre-Colonial Moroccan and European Travel Writing
"Ben Jelloun brilliantly weaves a spellbinding fictional history of modern Morocco with an unflinching look at issues of race, immigration, and gender. A masterpiece of storytelling." — Jonathan Smolin, author of Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture
ISBN: 9780810143593
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 208g
160 pages