Now and Then

As its title suggests, Now & Then is an urgent plea to revisit the present in relation to the past-to bear in mind the admonition that "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (William Faulkner). Lurking behind the warning is a ponderous question that haunts this collection of stories and essays: Are we going to have to relive it all over again-the era of racial, ethnic, and national tensions that made the 1930s such a terrifying decade in the history of western societies? In two stories and two essays, Salah el Moncef conjures up a set of fearful symmetries between the flimsy diversity and globalism of "Now," and the authoritarian, martial echoes of "Then," a world long consigned to the ash heap of history-or so we think. Moncef's collection of stories and essays is a timely reminder that Now and Then are frightfully similar-a warning we would do well to heed.