Tenir tête aux dieux par by Mahmoud Hussein (review)

Reviews 273 smile rather than to excoriate our illogical actions and incongruencies. Hervy’s criticism of muddle and incoherence is the bataille in the title, but the book’s tone is teasing rather than warlike. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Hussein, Mahmoud. Tenir tête aux dieux. Paris: Gallimard, 2016. ISBN 978-2-07017979 -4. Pp. 167. 17,50 a. This novel, recounted in the first person by its protagonist, is the story of a young freedom-fighter in Nasser’s Egypt. The action takes place in 1959, but the narrator intersperses flashbacks about the hero’s past while recounting events in the narrative present. The unnamed protagonist is an idealistic young medical student in Cairo who seeks to revive and advance the dignity of his nation and its people in reaction against its former colonial masters, especially Great Britain. Unfortunately for him, his democratic ideals, tinged with communism, have gotten him into trouble with the totalitarian authorities of the Nasser regime. When we meet him on the first page, he is already a prisoner in a camp for political dissidents. His description of the humiliations suffered by him and his fellow detainees is interrupted at regular intervals by reminiscences of his past. The reader learns progressively about his impoverished childhood and student years. We meet several of his friends, also young political idealists, with two of whom he is reunited in the course of his incarcerations. The guiding star of his life is a beautiful young woman, also a medical student, named Nadia. She aggressively takes the initiative of pursuing the affections of the shy young man. She loves him and wants to marry him. She also questions the need for and value of his Marxist political philosophy. Her doubts give him the opportunity to expound upon his principles in a series of ideological discussions with her. She and her father represent a majority of Egyptians who want the best for their country too but who passively accept the status quo despite its infringements on individual liberty. Nadia writes faithfully to the hero throughout his imprisonment, and he compares her fidelity to that of Penelope in the Odyssey. At the same time, he looks upon his own brave confrontation of his captors with the steadfast courage of Homer’s hero. Matters get increasingly worse for him, however. The narrator moves forward into the future as well as looking back into the past. He is sent to places of incarceration that are more and more hellish. We take leave of him at the last one where he is stripped and beaten but remains defiant in the face of tyranny. The last word of the text is the selfdescriptive adjective “inexpugnable” (167). The reader is left in suspense as to the hero’s ultimate fate. Curiously, the last page of text is followed by twenty-four blank pages. Perhaps we are being invited to fill them in with our own surmises. There are other interesting stylistic features. As in the Nouveau Roman, there are constant references to angles of vision and thoughts being revealed by looks rather than words. Also noteworthy is the narrator’s use of the classical style ternaire that goes back to the seventeenth century. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and phrases almost always occur in groups of three. University of Denver James P. Gilroy Jouannais, Jean-Yves. La bibliothèque de Hans Reiter. Paris: Grasset, 2016. ISBN 9782 -246-85776-1. Pp. 160. 17 a. Commissionné par un bibliophile parisien pour acheter une collection de livres ayant appartenu à un dénommé Hans Reiter, le narrateur de ce récit acquiert deux cent-cinquante titres arrachés à un étrange rival lors d’une vente aux enchères. Il entreprend de comprendre ce qui relie les ouvrages de cette collection hétéroclite traitant de la guerre et se rend compte que la clef du mystère se trouve dans la page manquante de chaque livre. Naviguant dans l’univers kafkaïen d’un récit constellé d’anecdotes et de saynètes comiques, le lecteur percera le secret de l’enquête bien avant le narrateur. Ce dernier est pourtant mis sur la voie dès le d...