Customer Reviews

This Blinding Absence of Light: A Novel

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The descriptor,'awesome', assumes unique resonance with this book. In 1971 a Morroccan military insurrection failed in its bid to overthrow the monarchical rule. Over 50 soliers were tried and this chronicles a 'pilgim's progress' of the subsequent imprisonment. Only four of our narrator's comrades in their subterranean cell block survived the 18 years of cramped darkness. Their bodies shrank. Their teeth rotted.The means of attrition are appalling. We hear the deaths occuring around them. Strangely, as I worked through this revelatory account, I gradually recognised the voice of displacement, insight and rigour I'd encountered as an adolescent whilst reading Camus', L'Stranger'. A mere 10 pages after this familiarity crystallised, our narrator indeed arrives at his recollections of the Camus piece, 'reading'it, as he did many other literary samples, to sustain his fellows. That said, this is one powerful piece of writing. Tahar Ben Jelloun has sourced the story from one of the four survivors. Authors may have succeeded in fictionalising such a scenario. But I know of none that have charted the painful disintegration of body and soul under extremis. War traumas, plane crashes in the Andes, spiritual revelations through self-imposed deprivations, fictions like Jim Crace's,'Quarantine', with all their virtues, will be assessed against the quality of this narrative. It is an astonishing triumph for man and his imagination.

It's hard to describe the impact of this book. Told in a very straightforward manner, it generally lets the events speak for themselves, veering closer to and further from non-fiction again and again as the narrative unfolds. There are times when it is so grim and relentless that it is hard to keep reading, but a great reward awaits the reader who persists, as this is not a story about the depths of human suffering and cruelty but about the depths of human resilience and compassion, which are deeper still. I read this years ago and have never been able to shake its impact, nor have I wanted to. It's a treasure to cherish.

Ben Jalloun's novel is based on the story of one Aziz Binebine, who was sentenced to a 20-year stretch of time in the hellhole prison of Tazmamart for his role in the 1971 attempted coup of King Hassan II's Moroccan government. The novel is fictional, but the underground prison of Tazmamart and living conditions there (it is now destroyed) are not.

The book examines the story of one character, Salim, who like his fellow cadets from the coup attempt, was sent to this horrible place. Their "home" was an underground cell, so small that even something as ordinary as sitting was an impossibility. Cockroaches and scorpions were co-inhabitants, as was the constant darkness. The food kept the prisoners alive, but just barely. Many of the prisoners turned to their faith in Allah and to the Qu'ran to make it through their ordeal, while Salim turned deeply inward, letting go of both memory, because "to remember was to die," and of the physicality of his body.

This Blinding Absence of Light is one of those books you must actually experience for yourself -- book reviews and descriptions of it can't really do the story justice. If you have a low tolerance for human despair, or you're in the mood for something happy, forget this one. Difficult to read at many points (and on many levels), this book left me considering the cruelty that can more often than not accompany power. It's also a reminder that in some cases, Hell already exists on earth.

I picked this book up from the libary and entered a world where untold cruelty and human suffering were a daily part of life. I finished this book about a week ago, and it is still affecting me. No longer do I complain or feel sorry for myself. It is a story that needed to be told. Put this on every American's "to read list" as after you read it, you will never be the same.

After all of the tales of violence and inhmanity that we are exposed to, I sometimes feel desensitized. Despite this, This Blinding Absence of Light still horrifies and shocks. The novel is never gratutitously violent but very simply describes the lives of several prisoners in a Moroccan prison.

The prisoners were simply soldiers following orders in participating in a failed coup d'etat. They end up imprisoned with little food, no medical treatment and more importantly, no light.

The fact that this is based on real life events is truly horrifying. The core of the story is not just the suffering but how the prisoners try to survive, try to laugh, try to be human. It is a situation that almost all of us would have difficulty comprehending.

This is an important story to tell and I definitely recommend it. From a pure literary point of view, it's difficult to comment on. This is a very specific story and is told very matter of factly by Jelloun. It's literary merit is a little questionable but is overshadowed by the importance of the events.

You don't know nuthin'! At least you're not rotting away in an dank, absolutely dark underground dungeon for more than a decade, half-starving and going mad, where your only pleasure is to not feel anything in particular, and the occasional bird song that one hears.