"Talismano" is a novelistic exploration of writing seen as a hallucinatory journey through half-remembered, half-imagined cities--in particular, the city of Tunis, both as it is now, and as it once was. Walking and writing, journey and journal, mirror one another to produce a calligraphic, magical work: a palimpsest of various languages and cultures, highlighting Abdelwahab Meddeb's beguiling mastery of both the Western and Islamic traditions. Meddeb's journey is first and foremost a sensual one, almost decadent, where the narrator luxuriates in the Tunis of his memories and intercuts...
"Talismano" is a novelistic exploration of writing seen as a hallucinatory journey through half-remembered, half-imagined cities--in particular, th...
Meddeb wages a war of interpretations in this book demonstrating that Muslims cannot join the concert of nations unless they set aside outmoded notions such as jihad, and realize that the feuding among monotheisms must give way to the more important issue of what it means to be a citizen intoday's post-religious global setting. Abdelwahab Meddeb makes an urgent case for an Islamic reformation, located squarely in Western Europe, now home to millions of Muslims, where Christianity and Judaism have come to coexist with secular humanism...
Meddeb wages a war of interpretations in this book demonstrating that Muslims cannot join the concert of nations unless they set aside outmode...
