Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman’s Journey Toward Independence (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation Series) - Softcover

Abouzeid, Leila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 029279603X ISBN 13: 9780292796034

Publisher: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 1989

Synopsis

In this moving fictional treatment of a Muslim woman's life, a personal and family crisis impells the heroine to reexamine traditional cultural attitudes toward women. Cast out and divorced by her husband, she finds herself in a strange new world. Both obstacles and support systems change as she actively participates in the struggle for Moroccan independence from France.

This feminist novel is a literary statement in a modern realist style. Many novels by women of the Middle East that have been translated reflect Western views, values, and education. By contrast, Year of the Elephant is uniquely Moroccan and emerges from North African Islamic culture itself. Its subtle juxtaposition of past and present, of immediate thought and triggered memory, reflects the heroine's interior conflict between tradition and modern demands. The title refers to a famous battle described in the Koran.

About this title

About the Author:

LEILA ABOUZEID is a pioneer among Moroccan women writers. She studied at Mohammed V University in Rabat and at the University of Texas at Austin. She began her career as a radio and TV journalist and also worked as a press assistant in government ministries and in the prime minister's office. In 1992 she left journalism to dedicate herself to writing. Abouzeid's fiction has been translated from Arabic into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Maltese, French, Turkish, and Urdu.

BARBARA PARMENTER is a lecturer in the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Arabic

About this edition

• Publisher: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 029279603X
• ISBN 13: 9780292796034
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 129