Description

Salvation Army
Abdellah Taïa
Translated by Frank Stock
Introduction by Edmund White

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 a sexual awakening 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 Kātib Yāsīn).

Native Agents series
Distributed for Semiotext(e)

About the Author

Abdellah Taïa (b. 1973) is the first openly gay autobiographical writer published in Morocco. Though Moroccan, he has lived in Paris for the last eight years. He is the author of Mon Maroc and Le rouge du tarbouche, both translated into Dutch and Spanish. He also appeared in Rémi Lange’s 2004 film Tarik el Hob (released in English as The Road to Love).

Reviews
“The novel is richly layered yet impressively lean, and as easily enjoyed by the pool as at a university library.” —Glen Helfand, Bay Area Reporter

“Just when you thought you’d read every coming out story imaginable, a book as fresh and original as this one enlivens the genre.” —Noël Alumit, Frontiers in LA

“This straightforward story about self-discovery is a reminder that coming-of-age tales still need to be told.” —Richard Labonte