A Palace in the Old Village

by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Overview

From 'Morocco's greatest living author' (The Guardian) comes a heartbreaking novel about parents and children, the powerful pull of home and the yearning for tradition and family. Mohammed has spent the past 40 years working in France. As he approaches retirement, he takes stock of his life - his devotion to Islam and to his assimilated children - and decides to return to Morocco, where he spends his life's savings building the biggest house in the village and waiting for his children and grandchildren to come and be with him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781906413750
Publisher:	Hodder
Publication date:	08/27/2024
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.11(w) x 7.79(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Fez, Morocco, and immigrated to France in 1961. A novelist, essayist, critic and poet, he is a regular contributor to Le Monde, La Républica, El País, and Panorama. He won the Prix Goncourt in 1987 for his novel La nuit sacrée (The Sacred Night) and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"With this novel, Ben Jelloun, a native of Morocco, gives us an unvarnished look at a Muslim's life in the West, and reminds us that literature can help us understand one another."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune

Editorial Reviews

Consisting of a subtle, well-paced first section and a more elaborate second that is too rushed, Ben Jelloun's latest novel feels like two halves of a story that never quite come together. Mohammed is a Moroccan immigrant who has been living in present-day France for 40 years working at an automobile plant. When not working, he is recovering from work, living "a life the same color as my gray overalls." Yet the thought of his upcoming mandatory retirement fills him with dismay. Mohammed's children, despite being raised in housing projects without a single French family as neighbors, are "assimilated." Son Rachid goes by the name Richard; son Mourad, is married to a Spanish woman (who Mohammed grudgingly accepts) and Mohammed's daughter, Jamila, is married to an Italian man (who Mohammed does not accept and no longer speaks to his daughter). When Mohammed becomes obsessed with reuniting his family in a large house in his home village in Morocco, his dream results in some unexpected consequences. Despite the structural flaws, Ben Jelloun (The Blinding Absence of Light) has created a fine character study and touching family drama well worth reading. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

In this modern parable, Mohammed has worked for 40 years in an automobile assembly plant in northern France to support his wife and five children. Now retired, he has built a huge house in his small Moroccan village and is waiting for his children to come and celebrate a holiday with him. As he waits day and night by the only access road leading into the village, he slowly sinks into the sandy soil and dies. The devout Mohammed did not communicate much with his children when they were growing up—perfectly normal in his culture but clearly dysfunctional by the French standards to which his children were accustomed. The tilting "palace" Mohammed has built sums up the family situation: it's "as big as his heart" but has never been occupied. VERDICT IMPAC Award winner Ben Jelloun (This Blinding Absence of Light) here uses poignant examples to explore the cultural/language divide, with one character eventually concluding, "Over there our values are nothing"—a lament sung lyrically throughout. Beautifully and concisely written and well translated, this novel is a superb addition to the genre of "exile literature."—Lisa Rohrbaugh, National Coll. Lib., Youngstown, OH

Library Journal

After decades in France, a Moroccan immigrant yearns to return to his native village.

Retirement holds little appeal for former autoworker Mohammed Ben Abdallah, who would just as soon keep on going to the Renault plant that has been his home-away-from-home for the past 40 years. The sudden (if not unexpected) loss of his workday routine has him at loose ends, leaving him too much time to ponder his life and contemplate its end. Four out of his five children are grown and out of the house, and he barely speaks to his wife, who is also his cousin. He loves his kids, but wishes they were less European. Their disinterest in their heritage eats away at him. Coming across as a thoroughly decent man, Mohammed takes great comfort in his Muslim faith, and has nothing but contempt for the imams in his community who foment radicalism. He is still, though, a product of his culture. He disowns his daughter Jamila when she chooses to marry an Italian man, and is only somewhat cognizant of the political unrest in the French immigrant community. He understandably finds it difficult to comprehend why a group of local youths would burn down his car. And it is this discomfort with the modernity of his adopted home that spurs him to take a trip back to his village, where he is building a home. Hoping to use the house to lure his family back to the Magreb, he builds an extravagant mansion that defies both taste and common sense. Energized by his new purpose, but unaware of the reality of the situation, he slips into a mystical state that makes it increasingly impossible for the family he values so much to reach him. Jelloun's (Leaving Tangier, 2009, etc.) haunting novel reads like a timeless fable, while taking on the oh-so-timely challenges of the immigrant experience.

Poignant meditation on the enduring lure of home and the cost of being left behind.

Kirkus Reviews