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Intricate patterns of the mind
Imagine a book of more than 500 pages where plot and character donʹt matter, a giant multi-room museum piece that asks to be read in stages and puzzled over. Ibrahim al-Koniʹs epic novel Al-Majus – newly available in English translation as The Fetishists – is just such a read. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw an explosion in novel-writing. As this larger-than-life literary genre moved into new territories and languages, it often displaced other imaginative prose, taking up the largest share of literary attention.
By the time the great Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni learned Arabic, in 1960, the novel was firmly entrenched. But al-Koni, who grew up among the nomadic Tuareg people, didnʹt want to bend the stories of his childhood to fit the form. Instead, he wanted to bend the novel to fit his vision. After several attempts, he invented a new, hybrid form that was fully born with his epic