The Last Night of a Damned Soul: A Novel - Hardcover

Benaissa, Slimane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802117805 ISBN 13: 9780802117809

Publisher: Grove Press, 2004

Synopsis

Chapter 1 (noon prayer)
The story opens with the main character, Raouf, on his way to celebrate the Muslim feast of the Sacrifice Eid-al Adha with a fellow computer designer named Athmane. An only child, Raouf was raised by immigrant parents (Egyptian father and Lebanese mother) well-educated scientists, to become an American. Stunned by the recent and sudden death of his father, Raouf experiences a deep void in his existence. Living with his Protestant girlfriend, Jenny, in a loving and stable relationship, Raouf nevertheless finds himself inexplicably drawn to the allure of Athmane and his deep connection to a Muslim fundamentalist community. Despite his Arabic and Muslim origins, Raouf had known only the secular world of contemporary American life. A Palestinian by birth, Athmane introduces Raouf to the Koran, to Muslim beliefs, and ultimately to the decision to repent and to "surrender" himself to Islam.

Chapter 2 (afternoon prayer)
Raouf follows the lead of Athmane, and decides to devote himself to reading and studying Islam. Through the connections of the Kuwaiti prince Djamel, Raouf moves to a studio apartment and continues to discover the depths of his Muslim roots in preparation for his formal and public repentance at the Hamza mosque. His mother encounters problems with her health, that she downplays to her son.

Chapter 3 (evening prayer)
Athmane prepares Raouf to enter into a new phase of devotion, one which justifies "action" in the name of God. This stage of isolation convinces Raouf that he must leave Jenny and their dog (which is proscribed by Islam) definitively. As he prepares for the most intensive and restricted part of his training, he must also figure out how to explain a lengthy absence to his mother.

Chapter 4 (midnight prayer)
Raouf submits to a rigorous period of prayer and preparation for jihad and ultimate death. He loses himself in the highly structured regimen of the indoctrination process, in the cult of the Islamic martyr. He and his fellow conspirators concentrate on their precision training for the "action." At the chapter's end, he is on his way to the airport to meet his fellow martyr conspirators at the rendez-vous point.

Chapter 5 (dawn prayer)
This chapter begins as a letter written by Raouf to Athmane in what is essentially an explanation of his joy at being ready to pursue to the death the "action" in God's name. In a sudden shift, the narrator Raouf announces that he mailed the letter but that he is not on the plane. What follows is a description of the moments leading up to his last-minute decision not to board the plane. The chapter continues with Raouf 's thoughts on suicide and Islam, and ends in prison. After days of intense interrogation, Jenny arrives to deliver a letter from Raouf's hospitalized mother. It was written after she saw his face on television as the terrorist who didn't board the plane. Written on her deathbed and "last night," Raouf's mother explores her own relationship to Islam and to the Arab-Muslim world in contrast to that of her son. The novel ends with the mother's final words to her son.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

A young Arab-American raised in the Bay Area is seduced by dreams of martyrdom in this sobering novel, Benaïssa's first to be translated into English. After his father dies, software developer Raouf casts about for meaning, finding it in the steadfast Muslim faith of a Palestinian co-worker and the Kuwaiti prince who owns the company where they work. After attending a celebration of Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice), Raouf decides to move out of his girlfriend's apartment, formally repent and join a radical mosque. Of particular interest to his new circle is his work history at Boeing, and he is called upon to serve as a martyr, disappearing for two months to prepare for death. However, he begins to question the legitimacy of his supposed act of faith when he considers that perhaps God should be allowed to judge the so-called heathens, rather than man. Raouf's relationship with his father is only sketchily outlined, and the novel's long-winded sermons do not adequately reflect the cult of personality that presumably stirred Raouf to alter his life so dramatically. Nevertheless, this is a chilling look at a matter that is unfortunately all too real, and Benaïssa's attempt, as a Muslim himself, to respond to the September 11 attacks is both poignant and potent.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

How can a good man be transformed into a terrorist? How can the Muslim faith be perverted into justification for murder? In his fearless fiction debut, Algerian playwright Benaissa evinces fluency in Islamic teachings and sharp insights into Islam's politicization and use in indoctrination of martyr-terrorists. His narrator, Raouf, an American Muslim software designer living contentedly with his dog and Christian girlfriend in California, is not religious, but his father's abrupt death triggers a spiritual crisis, opening him up to the influence of a fundamentalist Muslim coworker. As Raouf abdicates control over his life and sleepwalks his way into a well-funded terrorist cell, Benaissa skillfully dramatizes brainwashing techniques designed to convince even a well-off young man that his "real life" is the one God will grant him after his violent death. Tautly constructed, psychologically astute, and inspired by Victor Hugo's The Last Days of a Condemned Man and Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Benaissa's disturbing tale is both timely and timeless in its portrait of a terrorist in the making. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0802117805
• ISBN 13: 9780802117809
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272