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The Jealous Lover

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If you've heard of Larbi Layachi (AKA Driss be Hamed Charhadi) it is most likely in reference to his association with Paul Bowles. True, Bowles transcribed "A Life Full of Holes," giving the prose his own distinctive slant, but this book (sans Bowles) proves that Layachi was no mere Moroccan yokel riding on his coat-tails. Layachi's narrative voice is so genuinely deadpan, so detached from the world, that this should be required reading for the current crop American novelists, with their tendencies towards ornate language-games, sentimentalism, and endless irony. He is able to describe scenes of horrible brutality as if they are utterly normal, just as another forgotten great, Charles Willeford, is. No daily activity is considered irrelevant. Layachi doesn't use flashbacks or any of that modern Western garbage, his narratives run forward without ever looking back-- connecting with the past rarely and erratically, just as in real life.
Find out why it took so long for people to start writing down language-- get this book and see the awe-inspiring complexity of a story entirely in one man's head.