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Konfidenz

Ariel Dorfman author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press

Published:11th May '15

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Konfidenz cover

A passionate treatise on love, repression, and aesthetics, the novel raises issues of trust in a society where basic human rights are consistently compromised.

Text in Arabic. Tense and tightly woven, Thiqah is a dramatic novel set in Paris during World War II about a woman whose lover is accused of working for the Resistance. The novel follows nine hours of phone conversations between a woman and a mysterious stranger who seems to know everything about her and the reasons she fled her homeland. As the dialogue progresses, the man tells her many disturbing things about her and her lover (who may be in great danger), the political situations in which they are enmeshed, and his fantasies about her. Powerful and menacing, Thiqah draws the reader into a post-modern mystery where nothing -- including the text itself  -- is what it seems.

A political novel as well as an acute study in character and obsession, complete with interspersed commentary apparently addressed to the reader and the novelist equally, this brief, tightly constructed work addresses multiple themes. Dorfman uses the tension of an unstable political situation to force the reader into questioning his characters' stated truths, as well as their motivations. Exhilarating for its finely tuned unfolding but somber in its conclusions, Konfidenz demands a fundamental re-examination of the nature of trust Publishers Weekly Dorfman in previous work has explored the space across which political power and private morality glare at each other, and Konfidenz follows suit. From the first page, this slim novel invokes the menace of the former in order to underscore and explore the vulnerability of the latter -- Sven Birkerts The New York Times

ISBN: 9789992195789

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 162g

192 pages