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A review by booklane
The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
“At that moment, they both belonged to a camp that didn’t exist… All the feelings that rose inside them seemed like a form of treachery, and so they preferred to stay silent.”
Otherness, identity, culture clash and non-belonging are at the core of this sweeping #historicalnovel set in Morocco in the period 1947 to 1955, the dawn of Moroccan independence from France. In this time of growing discontent toward the French occupiers we meet Mathilde, a tall, green-eyed Alsatian woman married to Amine, a Moroccan soldier in the French army she met during WW2. They have just arrived in Meknes on an old cart, ready to take possession of Amine’s inherited farm 15 miles from town. Is it going to work?
Soon the two are at odds. Amine desires his wife but starts feeling the pull of the local male-dominated culture; he wishes his wife would let go of her spontaneity and European manners, which had attracted him in the first place, to become a more subdued woman. In her extreme loneliness and sense of foreignness, Mathilde will have to learn how to fit in – often the hard way – while still trying to keep an emancipated role in the world and ties with French culture. Characterisation is superbly nuanced and, despite the novel not being plot-driven, the account of how Mathilde and Amine's relationship unfolds is an engrossing reading experience. The author paints a truly complex picture as the two are pariahs rejected both in their respective and adoptive communities.
This is the first volume of an intended trilogy. Here Sleimani is intent on setting the scene, wonderfully recreating the complex historical context and the sense of place, the heat, life on the farm and in the town – the medina with its “ancestral values” and “the European town, a laboratory of modernity”. She also gives life to a strong cast of secondary characters, representing different positions from superstitious peasants, to fanatics, colonists and Francophiles . An excellent postcolonial novel and a thought-provoking read.
My thanks to the publisher for an arc of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Otherness, identity, culture clash and non-belonging are at the core of this sweeping #historicalnovel set in Morocco in the period 1947 to 1955, the dawn of Moroccan independence from France. In this time of growing discontent toward the French occupiers we meet Mathilde, a tall, green-eyed Alsatian woman married to Amine, a Moroccan soldier in the French army she met during WW2. They have just arrived in Meknes on an old cart, ready to take possession of Amine’s inherited farm 15 miles from town. Is it going to work?
Soon the two are at odds. Amine desires his wife but starts feeling the pull of the local male-dominated culture; he wishes his wife would let go of her spontaneity and European manners, which had attracted him in the first place, to become a more subdued woman. In her extreme loneliness and sense of foreignness, Mathilde will have to learn how to fit in – often the hard way – while still trying to keep an emancipated role in the world and ties with French culture. Characterisation is superbly nuanced and, despite the novel not being plot-driven, the account of how Mathilde and Amine's relationship unfolds is an engrossing reading experience. The author paints a truly complex picture as the two are pariahs rejected both in their respective and adoptive communities.
This is the first volume of an intended trilogy. Here Sleimani is intent on setting the scene, wonderfully recreating the complex historical context and the sense of place, the heat, life on the farm and in the town – the medina with its “ancestral values” and “the European town, a laboratory of modernity”. She also gives life to a strong cast of secondary characters, representing different positions from superstitious peasants, to fanatics, colonists and Francophiles . An excellent postcolonial novel and a thought-provoking read.
My thanks to the publisher for an arc of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse
Moderate: Animal cruelty