Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Story of Zahra by Hanan Al-Shaykh

Zahra is a young woman from Beirut who moves to Africa to escape her abusive parents and her dark memories of two abortions. After moving in with her uncle in Africa, however, she doesn't find any solace, and ends up in a loveless marriage. After realizing the marriage will never work, she gets a divorce and moves back to Beirut, only to be caught up in her country's civil war, where she begins a relationship with a sniper.

As the above synopsis shows, the subject matter of this novel is fascinating. Unfortunately, the narrative style gets tiresome. For unlike a regular novel -- where characters interact and build relationships -- this book is structured like a play where only one actor is on stage at a time, and the actress who plays Zahra takes up 2/3 of the stage time. In certain parts of the book this format works brilliantly, as the character that is speaking is allowed to fully describe their thoughts. By the end of the book, however, this literary trick becomes tiresome, and the reader is left with the impression that they are being dictated to rather than being told a story. In particular, three-quarters of the way into the book, I felt that I was hearing a long speech by Zahra, rather than reading a novel.

The village voice called this book a “masterpiece”. In my view, I don't understand how the Voice could have come to this conclusion. To be fair, this is not a terrible book, (in fact, some parts are pretty good), but it is also by no means a literary classic.

2 1/2 out of 5 stars