Novel
Naphtalene
حبات النفتالين
Alia Mamdouh · 1986
Synopsis
Baghdad, in the fifties. Huda, a stubborn little girl, grows up in a house of women, with her mother Iqbal, who is ill with tuberculosis, her grandmother and her aunts, along with her brother Adil, who is more sensitive than she is. Her father, Jamil, a policeman, is a distant and quick-tempered man who mistreats her; when he announces that a nurse is expecting a child by him and that he wants to marry her, the girl sees the world of her family fall apart, while she herself approaches puberty.
Context
The novel appeared in Cairo in 1986, published by the Egyptian General Book Organisation. Peter Theroux translated it into English under the title Mothballs for Garnet in Reading; his translation was reissued in New York in 2005 by Feminist Press under the title Naphtalene, with a preface by Hélène Cixous. The French version, by François Zabbal, appeared with Actes Sud under the title La Naphtaline.
Who it is for
In Arabic; translated into French and English, two hundred and twelve pages in the French version. The narration passes from one voice to another, and the child's gaze does not tell all it sees.
Prizes and reception
The best known and most translated novel by its author, whose English translation appeared twice, under two titles.
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