The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman [Hardcover]

Nedjma (Author), C. Jane Hunter (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802118054 | ISBN-13: 978-0802118059 | Publication Date: May 10, 2005

An autobiographical erotic novel written by a contemporary woman who is an observant Muslim, The Almond is an extraordinary and pioneering literary work, a truly unforgettable journey into the sexual undercurrents of a world that is, outwardly and to Western eyes, puritanical. Badra is a young Muslim widow who flees the small town of Imchouk to take refuge with her Uncle Slimane's iconoclastic ex-wife. In Imchouk, it was expected that Badra's life should be limited by her husband's wishes, but at Aunt Selma's, Badra begins to think about how she wants to live from now on. She recalls her youthful curiosity about sex-what other girls' and women's bodies were like, her first attempts to spy on men, her fascination with the two beautiful prostitute sisters who lived outside Imchouk. When she develops a passionate, consuming relationship with a wealthy doctor, Badra remembers and rediscovers her own sexual being, in scenes that are erotic, revelatory, and sometimes bittersweet. C. Jane Hunter's translation gives us a book of great power that resembles a Muslim Vagina Monologues. The Almond is an inspiring and illuminating novel that reminds us of the transformative power of desire and pleasure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This autobiographical novel, which first appeared to great acclaim in France, charts the sexual exploits of Badra, a devout Muslim who escapes her arranged and loveless marriage to live with an aunt in Tangier during the 1960s. France has withdrawn from Morocco, but the city Badra is inadvertently exposed to currents of the rising counterculture, including feminism. Then she meets Driss, an older European-educated doctor who serves as her erotic mentor, awakening her true carnal self and her awareness of her enormous sexual power. Reminiscent of Marguerite Duras's The Lover, the story is told by a wiser, older narrator recalling her reckless youth with envy. "Nedjma," the novel's pseudonymous Moroccan author, has a gift for turning a beautiful phrase obscene and vice versa—sustaining the title's metaphor for genitalia for over 200 pages is no easy feat. In some senses, her story appeals directly to Western fantasies—liberating the Muslim woman from her veil—and it is easy to see how such a book would gain approval from a French or American audience. Yet the novel is so genuinely artful, so emotionally sincere, that the racy subject matter is eclipsed by its stunning prose.
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From Booklist

This pseudonymous, purportedly autobiographical novel of love and sex in the Islamic world will surely be controversial. Badra, stuck in a joyless arranged marriage in which sex is a duty, and an unpleasant one, abandons her small hometown for Tangiers, where she moves in with her aunt Selma. Her aunt is a religious but fiercely feminist Muslim to whom Badra tells the horror stories of her sexual past. Despite her brother's threats to kill her for abandoning her awful husband, Badra becomes successful in Tangiers. Eventually, she meets Driss, the man who shows her that sex need not be for men alone, and their passionate affair forms the backbone of the novel. What makes the book so remarkable is the fascinating interplay between Badra's increasing comfort with her sexual self and her furious, vitriolic response to the ritualistic subjugation of women in the Islamic world. Nedjma writes brilliantly of a religiosity free from misogyny, and elsewhere the writing, though flowery, is frequently arresting. Fierce, empowering, important, and--there's no denying--very sexy. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802118054
• ISBN-13: 978-0802118059
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,198,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The desire to play, kill, die, betray, spew out and curse", June 22, 2005

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman (Hardcover)

The nature of sexual longing is at the heart of this languid, sexually explicit, but gorgeously evocative novel from forty-year-old North African author Nedjma. Readers will probably be shocked - not so much at the candid descriptions of love making - but at the fact that they eminate from the Muslem world, long thought to be the pinnacle of all things puritanical.

In this novel, which celebrates all things feminine, Nedja introduces us to Badra, a young muslim woman who, while recounting the horrors of her arranged marriage in rural Imchouk, also tells us of her steamy love affair with Driss, a wealthy, European educated, and well-to-do surgeon who lives in the cosmopolitan heart of Tangier.

Escaping to Tangier when she is still a girl, Badra stays in the home of the kindly, world wise Aunt Selma who tells her to open her heart, a heart that has been chained down with hatred and anger from her marriage to her uncaring husband Hmed. Bradra soon realizes that she never loved Hmed; all he managed to do was deprive her of her laughter.

Her mother is totally unsympathetic, telling her to stay with her house and husband and "accept your fate like the rest of us." But Badra secretly dreams of having the most beautiful organ and "having it impose its laws on the men and stars, pitiless and relentless."

Tangier awakens these dreams, inoculating her with a delicious poison. She greedily drinks in its air, its whiteness, its freestone minarets and its canopies. When she meets Driss, the relationship changes Badra's life, but it is far from perfect. Driss refuses to marry her, and because they are unmarried, their affair remains hidden from the world.

Driss satisfies her sexually and she loves him passionately, however, he is not faithful to her. They engage in rapacious threesomes and Driss has other women and occasionally also has men. But Badra remains Driss's "almond," his butterfly. Every particle of her skin a love nest and a source of ecstasy for him. When she's with him she "loses the virginity of her heart."

Nedjma portrays a culture that is obsessed with love and with sex, where it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you are discreet. Yet it remains a severely misogynistic society where the men don't really know how to love or how to give pleasure to women. Although men and women connect in marriage and procreation, most women consider sex to be a burden because few men know the workings of women's bodies.

With Driss every word and every look sweeps away another fear, another bit of ignorance, another shred of false modesty. He does love Badra in his own way: casual, detached, desperate beneath his laughter, his impeccable elegance, and his infinite overwhelming culture, yet when the crunch comes he can't commit to her. He's enlightened sexually, but not socially.

The Almond is evocative, sensual, and shocking; it's a story of soul and flesh giving women back the power of speech confiscated by their fathers, brothers and their husbands. It's also a story of feminine pleasure, a pleasure that is everywhere, frozen with desire, feverish and demanding. Mike Leonard June 05

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Book of Sex & Deep Unhappiness, July 29, 2005

By 

Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman (Hardcover)

If you come into this book looking for something that is pure erotica, then you will likely be somewhat disappointed. If, on the other hand, you come into this book looking for a peek into what is often a culture shrouded in mystery, then you will likely come away satisfied.

Nedjma is a pseudonym of a Muslim woman writer still living in a Muslim world and The Almond purports to be a novel based on her own sexual experiences. Badra, the narrator of this book, has run away from her horrible husband. She flees to Tangiers where she lives with her aunt until she meets Driss, the man who will lead her to her "sexual awakening." She stays with Driss for a long time hoping for more from him but, in the end, is left with nothing but money and unhappiness which she then proceeds to spread around.

The book is sometimes crude but cleverly written, alternating between her experiences growing up in a small town and her experiences in the big city. It is at times erotic, at times surprising and often enlightening of experiences that most Americans will never understand. However, it is also a novel of sadness and anger. In fact, the sadness and anger color the book so much, particularly the last half, that someone looking for a purely erotic experience had better go elsewhere. The story of Badra and her neighbor, Wafa, near the end of the book is so horrible it is difficult to keep reading.

On the other hand, if you're looking for something more than erotica, this book offers enough insights to make it worth reading. It is difficult to believe that the experiences of the "awakened" Badra are typical of the Muslim woman but her childhood experiences are likely widely shared. This makes this book valuable if you can get through the deep unhappiness that the story generates..

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and sad, January 4, 2007

By 

MomofZ (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman (Hardcover)

It is hard to evaluate this book if you have not been exposed to muslim culture before. I was raised in a mostly muslim country who represses girls and favors boys with the effect of raising weak men who think that power and virility comes from putting down women, be they sisters, wives or daughters. I left the country for college because I did not want to live my life like that and did not want to find myself in a marriage like the main character of this book. Belive it or not, these things do happen to this day among muslim families that live in very civilized countries in Western Europe. Someone had commented that the main character is a sick puppy before she went to the big city given her childhood experiences. I got news for you. In a repressed culture those things really do happen. Older men pray on little girls and or teenage boys pray on teenage girls and it all is kept quiet because if the girl speaks, it must have been her fault, the woman is the temptress and she is ostracized. It is sad but true.

I saw myself and my friends in many of these stories and it was hard for me to read. I initially picked up this book as an easy erotica read but it is so much deeper and so much sadder. I am glad I did because it is a very well written book. It is about time that topics like these come out in the open for people to know and discuss. And yes, maybe the book would not have had the success it has if it were not written by a muslim woman. Precisely becasue it is written by one that the story is so much deeper and true because it is not work of just fiction but it is a collection of experiences shared by many women on that side of the world.