The Puppet, a mythic tale of greed and political corruption, traces the rise, flourishing, and demise of a Saharan oasis community. Aghulli, a noble if obtuse man who has been chosen leader of the oasis, hankers after the traditional nomadic pastoralist life of the Tuareg. He sees commerce (understood as including trade in gold, marriage, agriculture, and even recreation) as the prime culprit in the loss of the nomadic ethos. Thus he is devastated to learn that his supporters are hoarding gold.
The novel's title notwithstanding, the author has stressed repeatedly that he...
The Puppet, a mythic tale of greed and political corruption, traces the rise, flourishing, and demise of a Saharan oasis community. Ag...
Winner, National Translation Award, American Literary Translators Association, 2015
Upon the death of their leader, a group of Tuareg, a nomadic Berber community whose traditional homeland is the Sahara Desert, turns to the heir dictated by tribal custom; however, he is a poet reluctant to don the mantle of leadership. Forced by tribal elders to abandon not only his poetry but his love, who is also a poet, he reluctantly serves as leader. Whether by human design or the meddling of the Spirit World, his death inspires his tribe to settle down permanently, abandoning not only...
Winner, National Translation Award, American Literary Translators Association, 2015
Upon the death of their leader, a group of Tuareg,...
A Tuareg youth ventures into trackless desert on a life-threatening quest to find the father he remembers only as a shadow from his childhood, but the spirit world frustrates and tests his resolve. For a time, he is rewarded with the Eden of a lost oasis, but eventually, as new settlers crowd in, its destiny mimics the rise of human civilization. Over the sands and the years, the hero is pursued by a lover who matures into a sibyl-like priestess. The Libyan Tuareg author Ibrahim al-Koni, who has earned a reputation as a major figure in Arabic literature with his many novels and collections of...
A Tuareg youth ventures into trackless desert on a life-threatening quest to find the father he remembers only as a shadow from his childhood, but the...
The Libyan landscape is one of the most diverse and breathtaking, replete with barren deserts, vast ocean coasts, and a stunning display of earth s elements. Al-Koni, an award-winning and critically acclaimed Arabic writer, reflects on this fragile environment and the increasing threats to its existence in "A Sleepless Eye," a collection of the poet s desert wisdom. He highlights the relationships between humans and Libya s natural features, grouping them by theme: nature, desert, water, sea, wind, rock, trees, and fire. Each theme contains a set of aphorisms that deliver thoughtful...
The Libyan landscape is one of the most diverse and breathtaking, replete with barren deserts, vast ocean coasts, and a stunning display of earth s...
The Scarecrow is the final volume of Ibrahim al-Koni's Oasis trilogy, which chronicles the founding, flourishing, and decline of a Saharan oasis. Fittingly, this continuation of a tale of greed and corruption opens with a meeting of the conspirators who assassinated the community's leader at the end of the previous novel, The Puppet. They punished him for opposing the use of gold in business transactions--a symptom of a critical break with their nomadic past--and now they must search for a leader who shares their fetishistic love of gold. A desert retreat inspires the group...
The Scarecrow is the final volume of Ibrahim al-Koni's Oasis trilogy, which chronicles the founding, flourishing, and decline of a Saharan o...
