Confessions of a Madman personalizes the struggle of a civil war by following the fragmentation and irreversible separation of a single family. Written in alternating flashbacks and descriptions of a man s present, Sebbar delivers what French critics call a modern fable for adults: a tale of familial disorientation, identity, violence, and morality.

A young man observes his mother go crazy waiting for her murdered husband to return home. Despite his estrangement with his father, the son vows to avenge his father s death by murdering his father s killers. In delving into his father s past,...