Lesercito della salvezza by Abdellah Taïa

Lesercito della salvezza Reviews

• 
  Kirstine

  Salvation Army is autobiographical, to an extent, it’s based on Taïa’s own experiences growing up in an arab household, with parents who fought and loved, an older brother he (and the whole family) adored, multiple sisters, and being a young gay boy. And it’s the story of a young arab man entering academia, learning French, coming to Geneva; a meeting with the Western world that, from afar could seem to offer salvation, but up close is so many other things. It’s at first the young boy surrounded by family and then, as Taïa himself described it when he visited my university, the ‘hero’ alone in Geneva. It’s a mirror, the two parts reflecting each other.
  
  Everything that we experience in the second half, when Taïa is older, is present in the first half, in his childhood. It’s a moment from childhood and a moment from adulthood. The violence, the love, the heartbreak, the betrayal, the hope, everything he’ll experience later is present in those moments from his childhood. And it’s nothing that you might expect. Taïa captures perfectly the duality, the complexity of any family and any person, arab or not, gay or not. We’re never just one thing, we’re always several people crammed behind one face, and the person we portray outside the house is the different from the one you meet inside. Perhaps being gay, and knowing it from an early age, made him more susceptible to these observations – that there’s always something of yourself you hide from others.
  
  Taïa is in no away ashamed, he writes with honesty and without regret. He’s helped bring a more positive awareness of homosexuality to his native country, Marocco, and it’d be easy to look at this as a gay coming-of-age story, which in a way it is, but it’s more unique than that, more complex and nuanced. It’s not the story of a life, it’s the story of two moments, and everything unsaid, but lived between those two moments. And there’s something relentless and brutal in his writing, perhaps it’s in the honesty, or the poetry, or the way he seems so determined to tell the story he’s telling.
  
  When he visited my university he gave a very informal talk to my class about his writing, his early life, why he writes in French, his filmmaking and various other things. He was incredibly eloquent and likeable, he seemed extremely reflected and like he was honestly trying to get at something deeper with his writing. He stated himself that he doesn’t write to solve problems, that whatever conflict or inner battle he’s facing in real life doesn’t go away as he writes a book, it’s the same afterwards. Writing is rather a way to fight the language. Marocco has a lot of French speakers, and they always spoke with an arrogant, hostile air, and Taïa wanted to use that, to take it and take revenge on the language, to fight it.
  
  I think that’s what you can sense when reading this book (and possibly his other books). There’s a ferocity to it, and a vulnerability as well, a desire to fight your way to freedom through this language, while being very aware you can’t truly escape it. It becomes more than just a simple story, it serves a larger purpose.
  
  In any case, Abdellah Taïa is an interesting, talented, unconventional writer, and I’m very excited to read more of him. He seemed honest and extremely reflected, being incredibly aware of his own position and what he was struggling to do (he joked that even being in bed with a Frenchman was colonialism). Simply a really, really compelling person and author. Please check out his work, I promise it’ll be worth it.
• 
  Gerhard

  Having Edmund White write the introduction to this autobiographical novel is quite ironic. Taïa became the first openly gay Arab writer in 2006, expanding his repertoire to filmmaking since then. I think he remains the only openly gay Arab writer, which says a lot about homosexuality and Islam.
  
  It also means that the introduction by White can be read as a kind of cultural appropriation. This is a great and important book because White says it is (White, by default, is the kind of man of letters that Taïa, according to Western culture, must aspire to becoming. Especially if he is gay.)
  
  Fortunately, despite White’s typically florid introduction – trust him to hone in on the detail of Taïa sniffing cum stains on his brother’s underpants – this book is able to stand on its own. The translation is a bit roughshod, with a lot of grammatical and editing errors, but it is this essential rawness of the text that adds so much to its power.
  
  White does manage to highlight the indelible sadness imbued in these pages, entitling his introduction ‘Love and Loneliness’. The one line that stood out for me is his comment that “this is, almost, parenthetically, a book about the love of men for men.”
  
  Despite some potently erotic and incredibly evocative scenes – a group masturbation session in a public toilet in Geneva, a threesome with two strangers on a train – larger questions such as Taïa coming out to his family, or perhaps his brother’s ultimate reaction to his unrequited love – are barely hinted at.
  
  Instead these sorts of questions are subsumed in larger questions of identity and diaspora, as in Taïa’s complex and tempestuous relationship with Jean from Switzerland, a relationship that can never transcend its transactional nature: being so much younger, Taïa is automatically seen as using the only currency available to him to ‘buy’ his way out of a poor, working class destiny in a rundown Rabat neighbourhood: his body.
  
  Of course, the larger transactional relationship that dominates the book is the fraught love-hate affair between postmodern Europe and postcolonial Africa, especially the West’s rather jaundiced view of Islam and Arab culture in general, which is seen as being inherently regressive and oppressive.
  
  Taïa’s honesty here is quite searing. The section where he arrives in Geneva, only to be abandoned and left to his own devices in a foreign country, culture and city by the foreigner who initially seduced him (or was it the other way around?) would have embittered most people, I think.
  
  But here Taïa finds an inner strength, and an abiding faith in the goodness of people, that is truly inspiring. So in one sense it is perhaps fitting that Edmund White himself points us to this book, which remains a beacon of how books can transform both lives and perceptions.
• 
  George Ilsley

  A perplexing achievement. The language used creates a distance between the text and the reader. The story is fairly common, yet the result in somehow mysterious. The language is very straightforward, yet Taia comes off as profound. One wonders how much of this is the translation, and how much is due to Taia's mother tongue. So much of our thinking is shaped by the tool of language (instead of thinking doing the shaping) and yet this influence is all but invisible to most people.
  
  I hope to have a chance to read this short autobiographical novel again.
  
  UPDATE: Read this again! Saw the movie and then searched out the book, only to realize I had already read it (the movie is only loosely based on the book). So perhaps everything seems more straightforward now because I've read it twice and seen a screen adaptation.
• 
  Ceyrone

  This is my first Abdellah Taïa and it definitely won’t be my last. This is an autobiographical, coming of age story, of the authors experience of growing up in Morocco, being gay and ultimately leaving Morocco. I like the honesty in which the author writes, without regret. He isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, there is humour and heart break but there is also a naivety, an innocence that gets squashed down by experience and life.
  
  ‘Lose myself entirely, the better to find myself. To summon, one gray and very cold morning, an army for my own salvation’
• 
  Lea

  He just gets it, he truly just gets it. Feels like having coffee with a close friend who's so very similiar to you, to whom you can talk about your lives without having to justify
• 
  Simon Vandereecken

  Je suis tombé sur ce livre par hasard à la Foire du Livre de Bruxelles, et il m'avait intrigué. Je l'ai dévoré d'une traite en l'espace d'un jour, et j'avoue au final rester sur ma faim, non par un manque de qualité, mais bien de quantité. Le livre était magnifiquement bien écrit, d'une honnêteté brutale dès les premières pages (même par moments légèrement gênante), abordant des thèmes assez difficiles mais avec une facilité déconcertante et une sorte d'innocence voir de naïveté infantile extrêmement touchante. J'ai trouvé dans ce livre une richesse d'écriture en même temps extrêmement simple, directe et franche, même désarmante de vérité à certains moments. Une belle découverte, je m'en vais d'ailleurs attaquer
  Celui qui est digne d'être aimé dans la foulée.
• 
  Anshuman

  I did not like the writing at all which may have been because of the poor translation.
  Also, the structure and the narrative felt abrupt, incomplete and ineptly incohesive.
  The emotions often seemed to be (overly) dramatised (again, probably because of the poor translation) and despite some moving bits, the overall effect of the book was lost on me.
• 
  Macartney

  Three simple yet haunting intertwining tales of a boy turned young man who is an outsider no matter who he's with or where he goes, whether he is home with his mother, on travels with his brothers, or in a foreign country abandoned by a former lover. Taïa caught my attention with
  his emotional gutpunch of an essay in the New York Times about being a gay boy growing up in Morocco and this memoir-cum-novel holds just as much power and casts an even larger spell. His astute perspective and lonely tone as an outsider and nomad with no true home reminded me of Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room. My only drawback with this novel is that I wish I spoke French so I could read the original without the barrier of translation. Highly recommend.
• 
  Amy

  This short book is a coming of age story of a boy from Morocco. He's gay, and maybe first puts that together when observing and loving his brother. Later he falls for a man from Switzerland, but when he pursues his education in that country, things go sour.
• 
  Dani

  El pan a secas de Abdellah Taïa
• 
  Brian

  "Salvation Army" by Abdellah Taia is not a complicated on the surface. It tells the story of a young gay Moroccan boy who grows up in large family and later comes to Europe in the pursuit of sexual and intellectual freedom. When his friend does not show up at the airport in Geneva to pick him up, he is forced to seek shelter at the Salvation Army. It is not your average coming of age story. Taia puts together an amazingly sobering story about growing up in a culture in which your freedom to make choices is not considered. He is in love with his brother and has erotic fantasies about him and the brother doesn't seem to notice. The fact of having eleven siblings can leave anyone feeling lost in their own family, but Taia retains a distinct personality through and through. He gets mixed up with Swiss sex tourists -- one who helps him achieve his dreams of leaving Morocco to study further.
  
  Whether he is writing about North Africa or Western Europe, Taia seems to have found a way to put things in perspective -- at least for himself. He finds North African lovers be warm, passionate and full of love for life. On the other hand, his Western European affairs tend to leave him yearning for more. And while he finds laughter and the exotic bliss of life in his family, it is Western Europe where yearns to find the peace and happiness one finds in freedom.
  
  Taia's autobiographical novel is an engaging read.
• 
  Neil Mudde

  This was my first book by Abdellah Taia, his name evokes in me the Casbah in Tangiers,were many years ago I spent a New Years Eve. The title of this book intrigued me,that is why I picked it up, and soon realized it had nothing to do with Soap Soup and Salvation, it is a story of a poor young Moroccan in love with the mysteries of Europe, the Salvation Army has a hostel in Geneva, the story is about love between family members, a special love for his older brother Abdelkebir and other sexual encounters he has with other men.
  The story allows a look into the life of a Moroccan family, Mother Father children, it deals with the poverty of "the Moroccan" and his several ways of combating this poverty.
  The book is a well worth and rather quick read.
• 
  Bishan Samaddar

  A deceptively simple narrative on the surface, Salvation Army seethes with subterranean energy. Beneath the tale of childhood love, sexual awakening, loss of homeland and the discovery of new shores, there is a deeper narrative about race, racism, and the inescapable inequality of love. The emotionality of the novel's language is shocking. Readers of literature in English will be shaken to the core by Abdellah Taïa's storytelling and his entirely original way of expressing emotions—the gruesome reality of them, immensely powerful and penetratingly subtle—which is what sustains the novel and makes it so intense, so irresistible.
• 
  Mustafa Bilal

  I liked the first part of the book, Taia's relation with his mother and brother was very interesting and engrossing. The latter part becomes a little flat for me. However, I admire the honesty with which Taia writes. The prose is very simple but is not immature. The most lucid part is about Abdelbekir and Taia's relation. It is quite engaging.
  
  I finished it in 1.8 hrs with an average of 265 w/m.
• 
  Imane MouEl

  i finished this book in what? 4 hours of reading? and i have to say im still hungry, intrigued to know more.... i wont speak about the literature, it s quite simple for those who hate to read.... but 154 pages is not enough for a person as curious as i am.
• 
  Wilma Hultgren

  great shit
  
  
  
• 
  Shams

  Una gran lectura, un muy buen primer libro de Taia, uno de los grandes escritores norteafricanos en francés
• 
  André

  Citaat : He leek me normaal om zo'n verlangen te hebben naar alles wat met Abdelkébir te maken had. En in mijn hoofd is het dat nog altijd. Bij mijn broer stond ik mezelf alles toe. Alles was natuurlijk. Alles aan hem, alles van hem was me dierbaar, raakte me in mijn binnenste, krachtig en geraffineerd.
  Review : Broederliefde vertelt het verhaal van een jongen die opgroeit in Salé, Marokko. Hij deelt met zijn moeder, 6 zussen en jongere broertje Mustafa één ruimte; zijn vader en zijn oudste broer bewonen ieder hun eigen kamer. Het is een warm nest, extra door de sensuele spanningen tussen vader en moeder. De kinderen weten alles van de seksuele bedrijvigheid van hun ouders, maar spreken er uit schaamte niet over.
  Als puber worden de hoofdpersoon en zijn jongere broertje Mustafa door hun oudere broer Abdelkebir meegenomen naar Tanger. Op die reis ontdekt hij voor het eerst de aard van zijn innerlijke verlangens. Hij vat een liefde op voor zijn oudere broer, die hij aanbidt. Als deze valt voor een vrouw, wanhoopt de knaap. Hij leert een docent Frans uit Genève kennen.
  Aanvankelijk liefde op het eerste gezicht.
  Op zijn twintigste vertrekt hij naar Genève waar hij zijn innerlijke ontdekkingsreis voortzet. Hij heeft zolang van Europa, van boeken, van de bioscoop, van vrijheid gedroomd. Maar het is vooral de eenzaamheid die hij, ver van huis leert kennen. Hij is aantrekkelijk en speelt daarmee. Enerzijds heeft hij de volgzaamheid van zijn moeder, anderzijds verlangt hij ernaar om vrij te zijn en begeerd te worden.
  
  Het is een mooi boek, maar het verhaal is een beetje oppervlakkig. De mooiste passages zijn die waarin hij over de adoratie voor zijn broer schrijft.
  
  
  
• 
  Doug Reyes

  This one can’t be read without context. The author, proclaimed the first gay writer from Morocco, writes from the remove of both place and time, both of which are important in understanding these stories.
  
  At the time of publication, he lived in Paris, and this volume exhibits several hallmarks I’ve come to expect (and love) in modern French literature: spare economic prose, unemotionally recounting sometimes embarrassing and horrifying moments, almost wistfully removed tone when doing so, the blurring of fiction and autobiography.
  
  The stories here do comprise a larger cohesive whole, but I wouldn’t call this a novel. The author doesn’t flinch in recounting the uncomfortable truths, particularly when showing his love for and worship of his brother.
  
  The examination of this life should be heartrending stuff... but whether it’s the translation (I don’t think so), or the writing itself, it failed to move me enough to be truly impressed by the artistry.
  
  Interestingly, Edmund White, in his introduction, briefly defends pedophilia. Awkward.
• 
  Ben Moody

  Abdellah Taia is described as the only out Moroccan writer. That may or may not be true, but what is true is that Taia's voice, talent, and subject matter, are in stark contrast to deeply conservative Morocco. "Salvation Army" is an autobiographical novel, which covers the beginnings of Taia's exploration of his own identity, sexually and culturally, and his first days in Europe, where he currently lives. The book says a lot in few words. The prose is minimal, but elegant. Strangely, though, it doesn't have a message, and no lesson is learned; it is just one part of one man's story. It's meaning is unclear, because it isn't finished, and whatever meaning it has to the author, may be lost or unknown to us (and that's how individual lives usually are). I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and hope to read more of Taia's work.
• 
  Ash

  No sé muy bien qué pensar de este libro. Está muy bien escrito y sin duda atrapa, pero algunos de los temas que el autor trata me chocan a nivel moral.
  Diría que el punto central de la trama es el proceso de evolución del protagonista hasta convertirse en adulto. Sin embargo, este desarrollo tiene lugar a través del desarrollo de su sexualidad. El sexo tiene un papel fundamental en la historia, y esa importancia exacerbada que le da el protagonista me resulta chocante.
  En concreto, me parece muy turbia su obsesión amorosa hacia su hermano mayor. No me considero una persona cerrada, pero esos tintes incestuosos de la historia que tan normalizados aparecen me perturban.
  La historia es buena, pero no me ha convencido ese enfoque hipersexual.
• 
  Jim

  This brief and beautifully written novel provides a rare portrait of what it’s like to grow up gay—and mostly unaware—in Morocco. While Taïa avoids depicting the overt impact of religion or other aspects of traditional Muslim culture, he does allude to the inherent prejudices that his young protagonist faces as he discovers his attraction to men, especially his perplexing and titillating crush on his older brother.
  
  Although the story is more slice-of-life than carefully structured plot, Taïa succeeds in showing us the all-too-familiar joys and agonies of burgeoning queer identity as well as the ecstasy and sorrow of first love.
  
• 
  Skye26 (beereadsff)

  Euh... je n'ai pas compris à quoi à servi ce roman. Il se termine sans vraiment avoir commencé. J'ai eu l'impression d'une succession d'anecdotes, intimiste parfois trop au point que j'ai trouvé cela malaisant. La majorité des femmes qui sont citées sont décrites de manière horrible. On passe d'un évènement à un autre sans liant, je n'ai rien compris aux pensées parfois dramatiquement exagérées du roman. Et on arrive à la fin, où on a résumé sur comment affronter la vie d'adulte et la vie... Il aurait pas été aussi court et ca n'aurait pas été pour le challenge je me serais arrêtée des le début.
• 
  Jasbir

  un récit un peu décevant à vrai dire. y'avait des moments assez incisifs de temps à autre sur la relation europe-maghreb, la réalité d'être homo et vivant l'entente impérialiste du tourisme sexuel et le quotidien marocain ouvrier. ceci dit, l'inceste au début ... pourquoi ? c'est pas qqch qu'on doit normaliser. je me demande vraiment ce que sa famille en aurait dit en le lisant D:
  
  je n'avais pas trop aimé non plus le style de son écriture : la simplicité m'a bien convenu mais la répétition des questions rhétoriques a fini par m'agacer. je ne sais pas si je lirais davantage de ses romans.
• 
  Janusch

  Tja, wat moet ik hiervan zeggen? Ik denk dat de vertaling niet hielp, die vond ik vrij matig en erg gedateerd aandoen. Het verhaal zelf was warrig door de vele sprongen in de tijd en zo “poëtisch” dat het bij vlagen lastig te volgen was.
  
  Daarnaast, en meest storend, werden er aan een stuk door vrouwonvriendelijke opmerkingen gemaakt. Hoe die passen (en een plaats hebben) in het verhaal van een homofiele man is me niet duidelijk geworden. Sowieso was er weinig reflectie, weinig ontwikkeling. Dit boek riep bij mij vooral veel ongemak op.
• 
  Sean Neun

  My second book from Abdellah. Never in my life have I read words by someone who I can relate to so much. He feels like a friend telling his story. He gives you the chance to see your privileged world from the point of view of someone you meet on your holiday to that enchanting country Morocco and lets you know how life feels as that person looking at you coming and then going back to Europe and leaving them where - in some cases - they are not allowed to exist by being their true selves.