An autobiographical coming-of-age novel by the the “only gay man” in Morocco.
An autobiographical novel by turn naïve and cunning, funny and moving, this most recent work by Moroccan expatriate Abdellah Taïa is a major addition to the new French literature emerging from the North African Arabic diaspora. Salvation Army is a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of Taïa's life with complete disclosure―from a childhood bound by family order and latent (homo)sexual tensions in the poor city of Salé, through an adolescence in Tangier charged by the young writer's attraction to his eldest brother, to a disappointing arrival in the Western world to study in Geneva in adulthood. In so doing, Salvation Army manages to burn through the author's first-person singularity to embody the complex mélange of fear and desire projected by Arabs on Western culture. Recently hailed by his native country's press as “the first Moroccan to have the courage to publicly assert his difference,” Taïa, through his calmly transgressive work, has “outed” himself as “the only gay man” in a country whose theocratic law still declares homosexuality a crime. The persistence of prejudices on all sides of the Mediterranean and Atlantic makes the translation of Taïa's work both a literary and political event. The arrival of Salvation Army (published in French in 2006) in English will be welcomed by an American audience already familiar with a growing cadre of talented Arab writers working in French (including Muhammad Dib, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Katib Yasin).

Salvation Army (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Literature & Fiction

Taïa, Abdellah

History & Criticism

Semiotext[e]

An autobiographical portrait of a gay Arab man, living between cultures, seeking an identity through love and writing.
I had to rediscover who I was. And that's why I left the apartment.... And there I was, right in the heart of the Arab world, a world that never tired of making the same mistakes over and over.... I had no more leniency when it came to the Arab world... None for the Arabs and none for myself. I suddenly saw things with merciless lucidity.... ―An Arab Melancholia
Salé, near Rabat. The mid 1980s. A lower-class teenager is running until he's out of breath. He's running after his dream, his dream to become a movie director. He's running after the Egyptian movie star, Souad Hosni, who's out there somewhere, miles away from this neighborhood―which is a place the teenager both loves and hates, the home at which he is not at home, an environment that will only allow him his identity through the cultural lens of shame and silence. Running is the only way he can stand up to the violence that is his Morocco.
Irresistibly charming, angry, and wry, this autobiographical novel traces the emergence of Abdellah Taïa's identity as an openly gay Arab man living between cultures. The book spans twenty years, moving from Salé, to Paris, to Cairo. Part incantation, part polemic, and part love letter, this extraordinary novel creates a new world where the self is effaced by desire and love, and writing is always an act of discovery.

An Arab Melancholia (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Dramas & Plays

Tales of life in North Africa that flirt with strategies of revelation and concealment, by the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco.
Tangier is a possessed city, haunted by spirits of different faiths. When we have literature in our blood, in our souls, it's impossible not to be visited by them.―from Another Morocco
In 2006, Abdellah Taïa returned to his native Morocco to promote the Moroccan release of his second book, Le rouge du tarbouche (The Red of the Fez). During this book tour, he was interviewed by a reporter for the French-Arab journal Tel Quel, who was intrigued by the themes of homosexuality she saw in his writing. Taïa, who had not publically come out and feared the repercussions for himself and his family of doing so in a country where homosexuality continues to be outlawed, nevertheless consented to the interview and subsequent profile, “Homosexuel envers et contre tous” (“Homosexual against All Odds”). This interview made him the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco.
Another Morocco collects short stories from Taïa's first two books, Mon Maroc (My Morocco) and Le rouge du tarbouche, both published before this pivotal moment. In these stories, we see a young writer testing the porousness of boundaries, flirting with strategies of revelation and concealment. These are tales of life in a working-class Moroccan family, of a maturing writer's fraught relationship with language and community, and of the many cities and works that have inspired him. 
With a reverence for the subaltern―for the strength of women and the disenfranchised―these stories speak of humanity and the construction of the self against forces that would invalidate its very existence. Taïa's work is, necessarily, a political gesture.

Another Morocco: Selected Stories (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

United States

Set in Salé, Morocco—the hometown Abdellah Taïa fled but to which he returns again and again in his acclaimed fiction and films—Infidels follows the life of Jallal, the son of a prostitute witch doctor—"a woman who knew men, humanity, better than anyone. In sex. Beyond sex." As a ten-year-old sidekick to his mother, Jallal spits in the face of her enemies both real and imagined. The cast of characters that rush into their lives are unforgettable for their dreams of love and belonging that unravel in turn. Built as a series of monologues that are emotionally relentless—a mix of confession, heart's murmuring, and shouting match—the book follows Jallal out of boyhood on the path to Jihad. It's a path that surprises even him.

Infidels: A Novel

Humor & Satire

Seven Stories Press

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Paris, summer of 2010. Zahira is a Moroccan prostitute late in her career whose generosity is her way of defying her humiliation and misery. Her friend Aziz, a male prostitute, admires her and emulates her. Aziz is transitioning from his past as a man into the womanhood of his future, and asks Zahira to help him choose a name for himself as a woman. Motjaba is an Iranian revolutionary, a refugee in Paris, a gay man fleeing his country at the end of his rope, who finds refuge for a few days with Zahira. And then there is Allal, Zahira's first love, who comes to Paris years later to save their love. The world of A Country for Dying is a world of dreamers, of lovers, for whom the price of dreaming is one they must pay with their flesh. Writes Taia, 'So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future.'

A Country for Dying

Literary

Dans une petite maison près de Rabat, Abdellah vit avec ses parents et ses huit frères et s urs. Adolescent, il découvre la sensualité avec son frère aîné. Quand celui-ci tombe amoureux d une femme, il se sent abandonné. Parti pour la Suisse, ce n est pas la liberté tant espérée qu il découvre, mais l exclusion et les déceptions amoureuses...

L'Armée du salut

Genre Fiction

SEUIL

Une mélancolie arabe

Infidèles

Abdellah Taïa, plus poétique, plus cru et plus violent. Zahira est une prostituée marocaine. Le pays où elle achève sa triste carrière et où elle mourra, c’est la France. Ses clients sont de pauvres hères musulmans qui ont échoué à Paris, comme elle, en quête d’espoirs qu’ils n’ont pas trouvés. Des personnages qui vivent comme des fantômes de passage. Mais si Zahira connaît la dureté de la vie, jamais elle n’a cessé de rêver à la métamorphose de son destin. L’imaginaire nourri par les films égyptiens de son enfance, elle porte ce rêve en elle, elle y croit. C’est cette confrontation entre un monde impitoyable et les aspirations de Zahira à un idéal d’amour qui la sauvera de la solitude, elle et ses compagnons de malheur, que révèle Un pays pour mourir. Comme Shéhérazade dans Les Mille et Une Nuits, Zahira et son ami Aziz se racontent des histoires, fragments d’existences de femmes et d’hommes poussés vers l’occident par la misère de leur sort et qui se heurtent à un univers postcolonial qui ne les reconnaît pas et qui ne les comprend pas. Roman « oriental », volontairement construit par l’auteur hors des normes habituelles du roman français (scènes impudiques, extrême violence du ton, passages d’une sensibilité exacerbée), Un pays pour mourir est un roman charnel, tout autant que politique. À paraître, au format poche : Infidèles, finaliste du prix Médicis 2012.

Un pays pour mourir (French Edition)

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Books by Taïa, Abdellah

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Taïa, Abdellah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Salvation Army (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

An Arab Melancholia (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Another Morocco: Selected Stories (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Infidels: A Novel

Infidels: A Novel

A Country for Dying

L'Armée du salut

Une mélancolie arabe

Infidèles

Un pays pour mourir (French Edition)