Memory in the Flesh (Modern Arabic Writing) [Paperback]

Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2003 | ISBN-10: 9774247345 | ISBN-13: 978-9774247347

This prize-winning novel, the first to be written by an Algerian woman in Arabic, is concerned with Algeria's struggle against foreign domination as well as its post-independence struggle with itself and the fate of revolutionary ideals in a post-revolutionary society.

The story, spanning more than four decades of Algerian history, from the 1940s to the 1980s, revolves around a love affair between Khaled, the middle-aged militant who turns to painting after losing his left arm in the struggle, and the fiction writer and young daughter of his friend the freedom fighter Si Taher, all brilliantly told through Khaled's voice.

It was features such as this convincing embodiment of a male voice alongside narrative techniques in which the author subtly joins the acheivements of world literature with that of local storytelling and traditional modes of narration that particularly impressed the judges who awarded this novel the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press (October 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9774247345
• ISBN-13: 978-9774247347
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #812,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"* "I thoroughly enjoyed this beautifully written book." - Naguib Mahfouz * "With a sublime emotional intensity, Mosteghanemi injects the reader into the mind, heart and soul of her characters, shedding new light on the meaning of yearning, nostalgia and the pain of a disembodied spirit." - Egypt Today" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Arabic --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press (October 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9774247345
• ISBN-13: 978-9774247347
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #812,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Memory in the Flesh July 2, 2001

By Ferial Ghazoul

Format:Hardcover

Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Memory in the Flesh

Memory in the Flesh is the first novel written by an Algerian woman in Arabic that has become a best seller. It was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 1998 in recognition of its distinction. Ahlam Mosteghanemi is able to represent more than four decades of Algerian history as they interweave with the characters' trajectories and memories, from the revolt of 1945 in East Algeria to 1988 when, Khaled, the protagonist-narrator is writing a memoir of his in the form of the novel we read.

Memory in the Flesh is dedicated to both the author's militant father, who was engaged in the national liberation struggle, and to her literary father, the Francophone Algerian poet and novelist, Malek Haddad (1927-78), who decided after the independence of Algeria in 1962 not to write in a foreign language any more, and he ended up not writing at all. Haddad's verbal traces in Memory in the Flesh, whether in allusions or intertextual references, attest to the literary kinship between the two writers. The issue of filiation and affiliation is a prominent motif in this novel.

Ahlam Mosteghanemi articulates the drama of contemporary Algeria in the language denied to colonized Algerians. Her novel partakes in cultural decolonization of her country on two levels: it reappropriates Algerian history and presents the ravages of colonialism from the point of view of its victims; and also she repossesses the mother tongue by writing in the language of the victims with passion and mastery. But the novel is not only about the Algerian struggle against foreign domination, it is also about the complex post-independence problems facing the emerging nation.... Ahlam Mosteghanemi exposes, with a postcolonial awareness, the disappointments, deviations and displacements of revolutionary ideals. However, she does not dwell on these social and political predicaments directly; she uses them as a narrative framework for the passionate affair between Khaled, the militant middle-aged Algerian, who turns to painting after losing his left arm in the struggle, and Hayat, the novelist and the young daughter of his friend and political leader. Hayat ends up marrying a character that embodies Algerian new bourgeois class, set on accumulating wealth and status symbols.

Each character in this novel is realistically portrayed, and at the same time seems to stand for a type encountered in our contemporary world. Hassan, Khaled's brother, presents an individualized case of demoralized Algerians who turn to religion for relief. Nasser, the heroine's brother, rejects the marriage of convenience between his sister and the successful businessman. The Palestinian poet Ziad, who taught in Algeria and comes to visit his old friend Khaled in Paris, meets Hayat and a mutual fascination between the younger writers takes place, disturbing the older Khaled, before he learns of the tragic death of Ziad in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion in 1982.

Building a nation proves to be not an easy task after one hundred and thirty years of colonialism, which undermined the native social structure. Disappointed intellectuals, like Khaled, look beyond national borders to make a niche for themselves abroad and gradually the dream of Algeria becomes a nightmare. Against this background, personal passions cannot be dissociated from national dramas: Hayat personifies an Algeria that is driven away from her revolutionary glory to its mundane concerns, and yet Mosteghanemi shows that beneath the formal breakdown the revolutionary spark is alive symbolized in the unfulfilled love between the protagonists.

The novel is narrated in the first person by the male protagonist Khaled, in a lyrical stream-of-consciousness style, with frequent flashbacks. The protagonist knew Hayat, the heroine, when she was a child living in Tunis away from the war zone in Algeria. Entrusted once by Hayat's father to him to complete the formalities for her civil registration, Khaled meets her again two decades later when she is a young woman adorned by traditional Algerian jewelry in the opening of an exhibit of his paintings in Paris. Her bracelet reminds him of his dead mother and the very identity of Hayat as the daughter of a militant martyr brings back to Khaled's mind the past of Algeria and the present disappointments. Hayat, on the other hand, meets in Khaled someone who knew so intimately her father -- whom she rarely met as he was involved in the clandestine struggle -- and could tell her about him and what he was like, going beyond the national icon that he has become in the eyes of his family and his country. This cross-referencing of father-daughter and son-mother relations gives the work a psychoanalytic dimension. The return of Khaled to Constantine to participate in the fabulous wedding of Hayat to a nouveau riche points to the frustrations of a lover and an artist as well as indicating the disappointing path taken by Algeria. Khaled's series of paintings of Constantine's bridges seems to be more than a representation of natural landscapes; it is an effort to bridge psychological and political chasms. In contrast to his sensuous but not physical relationship with Hayat, Khaled's relationship with Catherine, the French woman, demonstrates the encounter of sexual convenience, without the complexity of the multi-layered yearnig he harbors for the Algerian Hayat.

Ferial Ghazoul Read more ›

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If any book deserves a 6 � August 9, 2003

By Giant Panda

Format:Hardcover

This book has won the Naguib Mahfouz prize for Arabic literature, but in my opinion far surpasses any of Naguib Mahfouz's works. I predict in fact that if the Nobel prize committee ever overcome their biases and decide to grant the Nobel prize to an Arab woman, Ahlam Mustaghanmi will be the one. This book (and its sequel Confusion of the Senses) is this good! This is a novel, and a love story, a long prose poem, and a symbolic historical account. Every word in this novel has its place, the whole book is a superb work of poetry. Various ideas are blended into an evocative tapestry of unparalleled beauty. On the one level, we have the author's experimentation with ideas: the writer writing about a writer who is writing a novel about her. On a deeper level we have a symbolic relationship where a woman had become a country. The author's use of language couldn't have been any more superb. Every word is meant to trigger a whole stream of memories and emotions in the reader's mind. I admit having read the Arabic original, so am not sure how this translation will turn out to be, but from what I hear it is excellent.

If you liked this novel, you will like anything by Ghassan Kanafani.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Khaled's "beautiful diasaster" December 30, 2008

By Steve Reina VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

While the old maxim says it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, this book may provide fresh insight.

This is the story of Khaled, an ex patriot Algerian patriot who lost his arm securing independence for his people from France. Some twenty years later, this is how Khaled speaks of losing his heart to Hayat, the comely daughter of a patriot friend with whom he served.

The patriot's cause, his friend and so much from Khaled's life seem to be just reflected memory as unrealistic as the artwork he paints...a reality only on canvass...that is, until Hayat walks into his life.

Her accent, her manner, her essence, seem to so remind him of lost times that he instantly falls in love with her. And throughout the length of this book, he rhapsodizes on the various meanings of his interactions with her.

For her part, Hayat seems as ultimately worthy of Khaled as Roxanne was of Cyrano de Bergerac...this aloof love object piroutting through Khaled's life like a tiny music box dancer next to its mirror.

And as surely as she enters his life, she leaves it (at least as far as this story goes). But that's fine because next to Khaled if not what he made of her, perhaps any woman would have been forced from the picture.

It's a tribute to this book that I've re-written this review several times...each one written to yet a different subtheme, reflecting off yet a different facet of this story's hidden and not so hidden beauty.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Memory In The Flesh December 8, 2003

By Lamia Samad

Format:Paperback

This book is based around the struggle of Algerians and is centered on the love story of Khalid, a militant, and Ahlam, his friend's daughter. Memory in the Flesh is one of my favorite books because Khalid brought the viewers into his world and helped me concept his thoughts and feelings as if they were my own. He shares every thought and feeling with the viewer and manipulates them to believe him. He has love for Ahlam and he makes you feel as if Ahlam did not have the same love for him. I believe she did because Khalid is a man that I believe lives from his thoughts and he starts to believe they're real as well. We don't get to hear Ahlams inner thoughts and feelings and that is why I believe that this is a one-sided situation.
Ahlam writes to release her stress and she finds comfort in her writings and Khalid does so by painting. There are three things that Khalid loves, his country, his mother, and Ahlam. He combines this love for them into the paintings of bridges. I believe he paints these bridges because they symbolize the space he has between Ahlam, his mother, and his country. Can he cross this bridge? In his thoughts he can but I don't think he can ever meet them on the other side.
Many can read this book and think that Khalid is crazy because his love for Ahlam can be mistaken of being obsessive. Though I don't think he is. This is a man who had his country taken away, his mother taken away, so he meets a woman that has the same qualities and he wants to love her and he wants her to return that love. As many may question the love of Ahlam after reading this book, I question the love of Khalid. Does he really love Ahlam or does he think he loves her because she reminds him of his mother?... That's a question I asked myself at the end of the book because in gerneral, Khalid was looking for love because that was something he was missing in his life and maybe he was so in love with being in love. You can take his thoughts and feelings in different directions and interpretate the story in your thoughts, just as Khalid did with Ahlam.

I do believe that his obseesion with being in love merged into the actual love for Ahlam. I also believe that she loved him too, even though her love wasn't as obvious as his. She wasn't as forward as he was and that has to do with the culture fo being Arabic. A woman, especially years ago, does not find a love interest, the love interest is found for her. So, I believe that it was hard for her to express her love to him because she knew the family would forbid it. I envied her in her courage to hold back her feelings and to remain strong. I also envied her in finally admitting to Khalid that she did love him at the end dispite the situation she was in.

By her admitting her love to him, it gave him the opportunity to move on and be content with the fact that Ahlam and him could never be together. He didn't cross that bridge and meet her on the other side but his love for her was stronger than that bridge and she will always be apart of his life with or without her presence. Read more ›