Product Description

An autobiographical graphic 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 that world that is, outwardly and to Western eyes, puritanical.

Badra is a young Muslim woman who flees the small town of Imchouk for Tangiers, to take refuge with her Uncle Slimane's iconoclastic ex-wife, who has always advised Badra to seek her own pleasure. In Imchouk, it was expected that Badra's life should end with her husband's, but at Aunt Selma's Badra begins to speak about her sexual history, which started with a brutal arranged marriage, and to think about how she wants to live from now on. And what she chooses bears little resemblance to the role of timid, sexless wife that has been selected for her. 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 prostitute sisters who lived outside Imchouk- and flowers into a passionate, consuming relationship with a doctor and society man who makes her feel pleasure she has never known before.

As 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, illuminating novel that reminds us of the transformative power of desire and pleasure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #812447 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 241 pages

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 France has withdrawn from Morocco, but the city Badra is inadvertently exposed to currents of the rising counterculture, including feminism.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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

About the Author
Nedjma is a pseudonym. The author of The Almond is in her forties and lives in the Maghreb region.