A Sister to Scheherazade by Assia Djebar

A Sister to Scheherazade Reviews

• 
  Kayla

  Sister to Scheherazade is a fascinating story of female oppression framed by the story of Scheherazade. She is a woman who escapes death every morning by refusing to tell the end of her story to her husband, who wants to kill her but keeps delaying her death so that he might hear the end of her tales. Eventually he falls in love with her and she isn't in danger of being murdered any longer. Hajila is in danger as well but from a different kind of death. Because she is forced to veil herself completely, because her family wishes and expects for her to remain inside her home like a proper woman would do, she will suffer a kind of death from the world and also lose a sense of self.
  
  I really liked how the story was narrated. Isma is telling Hajila's story; it's symbolic in itself that Hajila has no say in what is told about her life. Hajila is the 'you' of the book while Isma remains the 'I', having freed herself of her husband who would have controlled and restricted all of her movements. While of course I hate reading about women who are treated so terribly, I can appreciate this book for it's presentation of this flawed society in which little freedoms can seem like enough to live for. It's terrible that women need to live their lives this way, completely under the constraints of men.
  
  I don't think that the writing was strong enough to carry the characters. While there were many short, powerful lines, I feel like the style didn't do enough to make up for a rather passive plot. Isma is telling her story but she needs to make up much of it for Hajila because she can only imagine how the other woman might feel. There aren't many incidents or exciting things that happen in this book.
  
  I would certainly recommend it, not for a pleasurable read but something that will be thought-provoking and promote helping women around the world find equality and freedom.
• 
  Imen Benyoub

  Tour à tour, sur la scène du monde qui nous est refusée, dans l'espace qui nous est interdit, dans les flots de la lumière qui nous est retirée, tour à tour, toi et moi, fantômes et reflets pour chacune, nous devenons la sultane et sa suivante, la suivante et sa sultane ! Les hommes n'existent plus, ou plutôt si, ils piétinent, il encombrent, ils espionnent, les yeux définitivement crevés !
• 
  Jo

  3.5 stars
  
  There is a lot to admire in this novel of two women who are concurrently married to the same man. Narrated by Isma, the first wife, the book is split into three parts, the first with chapters alternating between Isma and Hajila, the second wife she chose for her husband. The second part focuses on Isma, her past and the links these women's stories have with that of Scheherazade and her sister, while the third part provides some closure.
  
  Isma writes of the passionate relationship she initially had with 'the husband' which lies in stark contrast to that of Hajila who is only allowed to leave their apartment to go to the hamman or baths, a refuge from a life of drudgery. Cooking, cleaning and marital rape are her lot with the only brightness in her life given by Nazim her stepson, whose mother is never spoken of or revealed. Her mother Touma and younger sister Kenza are the only people she talks to, the former of whom believes that the financial benefits the husband brings should be all Hajila needs to be happy.
  
  Hajila rebels from this imprisonment and begins to take walks every day and these passages were some of my favorites; Assia Djebar's writing is often poetic and beautiful although it sometimes requires rereading to fully understand what it is she is trying to convey, for example,
  
  'Our words throw light on neither pain nor joy; they are snares. Their tintinnabulation wells from springs of passion. The half-darkness inveigles them into our bed, just as our transports approach flash point.'
  
  The second and third parts are easier to read as Isma tells stories of her family and the way the women were treated and expected to act. Right up to the last page of the novel entitled 'The Lute' Assia Djebar emphasizes this circumscribed and often miserable existence that so many Algerian women have (the novel was written in 1987 so I'm not sure how this has changed since then.) By using the story of Scheherazade and her sister she makes a link between Hajila and herself but there is also a distance from Hajila who we only see through Isma's eyes.
  
  I really enjoyed Assia Djebar's
  Children of the New World which is also focused on women's voices but that one, although longer, felt a smoother, more engaging read. I'm finding it hard to articulate why this novel didn't entirely work for me and a reread may even be in order but I'm still keen to read more of Djebar's work in the future.
  
  
  
• 
  Robert Sheppard

  SCHEHERAZADE AND HER OFFSPRING----"A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, ARABIAN ENTERTAINMENT," JOHN BARTH'S "DUNYAZADIAD," ITALO CALVINO'S "INVISIBLE CITIES," GÜNELI GÜN'S "ROAD FROM BAGHDAD," AND ASSIA DJEBAR'S "A SISTER TO SHEHERAZADE"----FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
  
  
  "The Thousand and One Nights," or "Alf Layla Wa Layla," is often considered the archetypal narrative text, or the "Mother of All Narrative," and this may well explain the universal scope of its appeal and enduring influence over the millennia as one of the central classics of World Literature.
  
  Its origins and authorship are obscure, and its narrative matter most likely evolved and coalesced over centuries in various cultures of the Middle-East, including Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Mesopotanian, Arabic and other sources before being integrated into a masterful organic whole sometime during the Golden Age of Islamic Culture under the Abbasid Caliphate, and becoming publicly known and acknowledged sometime in the 12th Century. No single author of the work has been identified, and most likely it was edited into its present form in several stages, beginning with an Arabic adaptation of a looser prior Persian collection, the "Hazar Afsana" (Thousand Tales) into a more organic whole. What we know in the West as the 1001 Nights was also shaped by the translation and further editing by the foremost Western translator, the French Orientalist Jean Antoine Galland (1646-1715) who added additional tales from the Mid-East not included in the original Arabic version, most famously those of "Aladdin's Lamp" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Theives."
  
  If the source material is diverse and multi-cultural, nonetheless the culminating integration of the Arabian Nights into a whole reflects the Arabic and Islamic worldview, with its philosophical and religious assumptions. The Islamic Caliphate in the wake of its amazing conquests from Spain to India was faced with the immensse task of handling and integrating dozens of diverse and ancient cultures while attempting to maintain the sources of its own internal cohesion, centered on the Koran and Hadith, in which it was only partly successful. "The Thousand and One Nights" thus constitutes in effect a mirror of the Islamic world, a melange composed of the peoples of a myriad of cultures and histories, and of Arabic culture's ability to assimilate these varied strands of influence. The bulk of its stories center on the two great cultural centers of gravity in the Islamic world, Baghdad and Iraq on one side and Egypt on the other, and though one finds characters in the stories of Hebrew, Christian, Zoroastrian, Indian, Persian and even Chinese origin, characteristically one sees their conversion to Islam and never vice-versa.
  
  The organic unity of the incredibly diverse tales and stories of the 1001 Nights lies in their rootedness and constant interplay with the ultimate frame story, that of the vizir's daughter, Scheherezade, the narrator of the extended tales over the one-thousand and one nights, and her perpetually impending death at the hands of her husband, King Shahrayar. Thus the book opens with the account of the visit of the King's brother, Shahzaman, who is grieved at having been forced to execute his wife for unfaithfulness, having discovered her in flagrante delicto with the palace cook. King Shahrayar then discovers his own wife, the Queen, engaging in orgies alongside her serving maids, with several black slaves disguised in women's dress, and orders his vizir to execute all of them. Concluding in his grief that henceforth no woman can ever be trusted, he then adopts a brutal plan to marry a new wife every night and having slept with her, order the vizir to execute her at dawn each morning before she has the chance to make the King again a cuckold. This he continues each night and day until hundreds of brides have met their death and the kingdom is thrown into a universal horrified grief. Finally, the vizir's own daughter, Scheherezade, asks her father the vizir to marry her to the King, come what may. Over her father's objection she marries Shahrayar, sleeps with him, and with her expected execution looming, calls for her sister Dunyazade to join them in their last hours before daybreak. Dunyazade then asks Scheherezade to entertain the King and herself with her lively stories, and she does so, so entrancing the King with the beginning tale, cut short in a "cliff hanger" pause before its ending, that the King postpones her execution until the next night so that he can hear the continuation of the tale. With this "sword of Damocles" hanging over her head, Scheherezade then continues in the same way for each of the suceeding thousand nights, so entrancing the King and leaving him desirous of the continuation of the stories, which proliferate endlessly, that her execution is continually deferred.
  
  The narrative thus works through the suspension of time by using storytelling to stop its flow, the suspension of time in turn enhancing the narritive in reciprocal circularity of effect. Within this circularity the continuous story develops through variations, echoes, and forward and backward references, rather than linear causal sequences. Each tale thus generates the kernels and seeds of further stories to come, and the overall unity of the work is generated from the interlinking and embeddedness of each story in the others. The stories thus are similar to the familiar nested "Russian Dolls" in which opening one doll one finds another, then another, ad infinitem.
  
  The variety of the stories are legion and encompass almost every genre later to be elaborated in World Literature.
  
  
  
  THE CRIME FICTION GENRE
  
  
  
  Exemplary instances of the crime or murder mystery and suspense thriller genres, associated with Wilkie Collins, Poe and Conan Doyle are found in abundance in the collection, with multiple plot twists and detective fiction elements, such as "The Three Apples." In that tale, Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid Caliph, comes to possess a chest, which, when opened, contains the dead severed body of a young woman. Outraged, Harun gives his vizier, Ja’far, three days to find the culprit or be executed himself . At the end of three days, when Ja’far is about to be executed for his failure, two men come forward, both claiming to be the murderer. As they tell their story it transpires that, although the younger of them, the woman’s husband, was responsible for her death, some of the blame attaches to a certain slave, who had wrongfully taken one of the apples of the title, inadvertantly causing the woman’s murder. Harun then gives Ja’far three more days to find the guilty slave. When he yet again fails to find the culprit, and bids his family goodbye before his execution, he discovers at the last minute by chance his daughter has the missing apple, which she obtained from Ja’far’s own slave, Rayhan. Thus the mystery is solved.
  
  
  
  THE HORROR FICTION GENRE
  
  
  
  The Arabian Nights tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted by jinns, who are superhuman spirits, genies or demons. This Nights story alongside many others is almost certainly the earliest surviving literature that mentions ghouls. Another prime example is the story "The History of Gherib and His Brother Agib," in which Gherib, an outcast prince, fights off a family of ravenous Ghouls and then enslaves them and converts them to Islam.
  
  
  
  THE FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION GENRE
  
  
  Several stories within the One Thousand and One Nights feature early science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya," where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to Paradise and to Hell, and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along the way, he encounters societies of djinns, mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, and other forms of life. In "Abu al-Husn and His Slave-Girl Tawaddud", the heroine Tawaddud gives an impromptu lecture on the mansions of the Moon, and the benevolent and sinister aspects of the planets.
  
  In another 1001 Nights tale in the fantasy genre, "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist, echoing also elements of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia." Other Arabian Nights tales depict also Amazon societies dominated by women, lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn, and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, lifelike humanoid robots and automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot who directs the party towards the ancient city, which has now become a ghost town.
  
  
  FEMINIST NARRATIVE----THE FIRST FEMINIST NARRATIVE IN WORLD LITERATURE
  
  
  It may seem strange to find early feminist literature within such an Arabic Medieval work expressive of a culture and tradition usually presumed to be the exact opposite of feminist concerns. Yet the entire structure of the 1001 Nights is that of Scherezade's courageous use of her magnificent intelligence, depth of feeling, creativity and humanity to not only defer the irrational homicidal violence of a male tyrant, but in the very process to re-educate and acclimatize him to greater tolerance and humane civilization. One story of a feminist bent I particulary enjoyed was that of "The Tale of Sympathy the Learned." In this tale, a female slave named Sympathy, tested by her master and later the Caliph, demonstrates her knowledge as being far superior to all the greatest scholars in Islam. By the end of the tale, she is universally praised for both her loyalty and intelligence and receives for herself and her master wealth and power, rewarded by the Caliph. By telling this tale, Sheherazade is offering the King a new ideal about how women can be trustworthy and virtuous servants. Women can also be as knowledgeable about life and sometimes more so than men if they put the same effort and ability into their studies as men. Women are not predisposed to ignorance based only on their sex.
  
  Sheherazade the narrator herself shares many of the qualities of her protagonist Sympathy. She has also studied much about Islamic culture and ideals as the daughter of the Vizir. Sheherazade also uses her cleverness to accomplish her goals. Sympathy uses knowledge to gain riches for her master and Sheherazade uses knowledge to concoct tales to a tyrant King in order to gain liberation for her people. Both women fight through prejudice to achieve some status by the end of their prospective stories. Sympathy in some ways is a fictional alter ego of Sheherazade.
  
  
  THEMES OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS----FATE & DESTINY
  
  
  A common theme in many Arabian Nights tales is fate and destiny.
  Most of the tales begins with an "surfacing of destiny" which manifests itself through an anomaly; one anomaly always generates another,so a chain of anomalies is set up, building to a story of fascination and enchantment. The chain of anomalies always tends to lead back to "normality" in which destiny sinks back into its invisibility in our daily life. The protagonist of the stories may in fact be seen as destiny itself.
  
  
  
  THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN WORLD LITERATURE
  
  
  The influence of the 1001 Nights on World Literature has been and remains profound. Writers as diverse as Henry Fielding to Naguib Mahfouz paid homage to it in their own works. Other writers who have been influenced by the Nights include John Barth, Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie, Goethe, Walter Scott, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Flaubert, Marcel Schwob, Stendhal, Dumas, Gérard de Nerval, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Hofmannsthal, Conan Doyle, W. B. Yeats, H. G. Wells, Cavafy, Calvino, H. P. Lovecraft, Marcel Proust, A. S. Byatt and Angela Carter. Themes and motifs with parallels in the Nights are found in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" (in The Squire's Tale the hero travels on a flying brass horse) and Boccaccio's "Decameron" as well as Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso." Four modern writers who have not only been influenced by The Nights but gone on to develop its themes and techniques further in unique directions deserve special mention and individual attention:
  
  
  
  
  JOHN BARTH'S "DUNYAZADIAD"
  
  
  
  John Barth is one of America's formost "Post-Modern" writers, and in his modern narrative epic "Dunyaziad" he upends the classical tale of the 1001 Nights by retelling it from the perspective of Scheherezade's younger sister, Dunyazade. In this retelling Scheherezade is able to tell so many enchanting stories not from her native creative genius but because each night a bald, bespectacled, middle-aged genie appears from the future to tell the tales from a book he has already read: "The Thousand and One Nights." This "genie" is clearly Barth himself, who epitomizes the "intertextual" process by which stories "tell themselves" and are transmitted from the past to the future and back again, almost independently of their supposed "authors." Like most of Barth's narratives, it is intensely self-referential, commenting on its own structure and motifs as they evolve through their narration, often featuring frames within frame narratives, featuring characters who themselves are writers and storytellers in a post-modern metanarrative mise-en-abime.
  
  
  
  ITALO CALVINO'S "INVISIBLE CITIES"
  
  
  In his work Italo Calvino joins history's caprices with the whimsey of imaginative fancy. Like Jorge Luis Borges, whom he admired, his novels and tales often read as allegories on the human capacity to find worlds in words and to reveal the fragility of the human condition and of what we take to be historical or material reality in our lives. In one of his more delightful concoctions, "Invisible Cities" Calvino brings together two fertile and febrile sources: Scherezade's sea of stories and his partly factual, partly fantastic extension of of Marco Polo's Travels. Kublai Khan in fact sent Polo on several "fact finding" missions to the distant corners of his empire. In "Invisible Cities" his reports back to the Khan grow increasingly fantastic as he crosses the border between reality and the imagination. As the Emperor, Polo and the Empire bloat and age, with each return to the throne Polo becomes a Scherezadian storyteller, imposing his will to fancy on reality, just as the Emperor imposes his will to power on reality, engaging in an extended meditation on the sovereign powers of storytelling itself.
  
  
  
  GÜNELI GÜN'S "ROAD FROM BAGHDAD"
  
  
  Günelli Gün is a Turkish female writer educated in the United States and an award-winning translator of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's novel, "The New Life." In her feminist picaresque "The Road to Baghdad" she presents us with a modernized and post-modernized reworking of the Arabian Nights saga, replete with gender-bending, morphing, cross-dressing and transgressive identities that balance her created world on the cutting edge between unreality and surreality. Interweaving myth, fact and fiction, Gün creates a fanciful, old-fashioned epic that spans the breadth of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century and tells a meandering tale of a woman's travels and travails. The awkward young Huru's adventures begin when her brother abandons her during a journey from Istanbul to Baghdad. By the end of her rambles, when she trades her musical talent for something more valuable, Huru has spent time disguised as a boy and has married a woman; she has seen Persia, Turkey and Syria and traveled through time; she has married a Sultan, borne his son and survived--with help from the spirit world--by her wits and her talent for playing her stone lyre. In the Post-modern idiom she uses the self-referentiality of the narrative with its colloquial theatricality to attempt to unmask what is perceived as the constructedness and fictiveness of the "reality" in which we presume to live.
  
  
  
  
  ASSIA DJEBAR'S "A SISTER TO SHEHERAZADE"
  
  
  
  Assia Djebar is a renown Algerian writer who was the first Algerian woman admitted to the prestigous Ecole Normale Superieure in France prior to Independence. Thereafter she became perhaps the most internationally visible woman writer in the Arab world. Her work speaks forcefully for human rights universally, and women's rights in particular. In her rendering of the material of the "Thousand and One Nights" she universalizes the experience of Scheherezade to that of all brides on their wedding nights, mapping the collision of the world of fairy tales with the realities of centuries old traditions and the powers of men and society, dramatizing the timelessness of women's subjugation to realities beyond their control, passing from innocence into experience----that is through the rites of initiation into the timeless Sisterhood of Scherezade.
  
  
  
  
  A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS AND SPIRITUS MUNDI
  
  
  
  
  The "Thousand and One Nights" also significantly influenced the composition of my own work, most notably my contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. In particular, the chapter "Neptune’s Fury & The Perils of the Sea" including the embedded novella "Naval Diaries and Ship’s Logs of Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius (1780-1875)" reflect the themes and techniques of the 1001 Nights. In it we follow the fate of the modern protagonist Sartorius' ancestor, Royal Navy Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius as he experiences a realm of fantastic adventure, from participating in the naval battles of Trafalgar and Egypt with Lord Nelson, to shipwreck on the Indian Ocean, his sexual encounter with the sorceress "Lilith" or Sir She, and most significantly his confinement in the palace of the "Sultan of the Sea of Stories" in which, like Scheherezade, he and his fellows, Billali the aged scholar, Ibn Battuta the Arab world traveller, and Princess Nooaysua, a Scheherezadian heroine, must daily invent and compose a series of stories for the Sultan's pleasure, on pain of death.
  
  
  In conclusion, I would recommend to all of you to take the time to read and enjoy the 1001 Nights and lose yourself in its narrative web and spell, as well as taking a look at its modern and post-modern spiritual offspring in the works of John Barth, Italo Calvino, Günelli Gün, Assia Djebar and in Spiritus Mundi.
  
  
  For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
  
  
  For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi:
  http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...
  
  
  Robert Sheppard
  
  
  Editor-in-Chief
  World Literature Forum
  Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
  Author’s Blog:
  http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
  Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads:
  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
  Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I:
  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
  Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance
  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
  
  Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
• 
  Elin

  Assia Djebar skriver här om Hajila som är fast i ett tvångsmässigt och våldsamt äktenskap som andra hustru åt sin man. Han har varit gift och har barn med Isma innan. Isma är berättarröst och beskriver en helt annan relation till Mannen, som beskrivs utan namn och därför är väldigt anonym i berättelsen. De båda har haft en passionerad kärlek men relationen mellan Mannen och Hajila är helt annorlunda. Hon blir våldtagen och misshandlad. Hennes berättelse blandas med Djebars beskrivning av algeriska kvinnors liv isolerade från omvärlden på grund av en hederskultur. Hon jämför dagens kvinnor situation med dåtidens kvinnor som levde isolerade i harem. Författaren har blivit föreslagen för Nobelpriset och det hade varit en lycka om hon fått det som kvinnlig nordafrikansk författare som skriver om kvinnors förtryck. Hennes språk är vackert med målande beskrivningar. Dock hänger jag inte riktigt med i allt, kanske jag borde ha läst på mer om kvinnors situation i Algeriet. Ismas beskrivningar av sin relation till Mannen är svåra att hänga med på. För mig är det Hajilas berättelse som tar tag och kommer följa mig framöver. Det var väldigt speciellt att ligga på stranden helt fritt och läsa om hennes kamp och längtan att få gå fritt utanför dörren utanför slöja. Hon gör det hon längtar efter! I kapitlet som kallas ”Naken utomhus” drar hon av sig slöjan och går på stan i bara sin klänning. Detta får hon betala för då hennes man misshandlar henne. Men hon gör det och hon slutar inte. Hajila är min hjältinna.
• 
  Boukhalfa Inal Ahmed

  Ce roman a été écrit en 1987; l'auteure poursuit la recherche entamée avec l'Amour fantasia, cette fois-ci plus du côté des femmes du quotidien que de l'histoire.Roman de la “sororité”, Ombre sultane et par bien des aspects déroutant. Isma a choisi une autre femme à son mari, dont elle est séparée, Hadjila-Meriem sa fille va vivre avec sa mère, mais Nazim né d'une Française a adopté Hadjila. L'homme, le mari n'est jamais nommé. Il est l'amant pour lequel la femme retrouve gestes d'amour et de tendresse mais surtout le maître, celui qui soumet la femme à ses exigences. Cette soumission engendre une révolte intérieure toute contenue en apparence. Une problématique du dedans et du dehors se déploie avec subtilité autour de ces deux femmes.
• 
  Najoua Eld

  Malheureusement ce livre est trop long et décousu pour que le fond (qui lui est extrêmement intéressant) puisse être apprécié à sa juste valeur. Je me suis perdue plusieurs fois dans les descriptions et les histoires qui étaient liées parfois mais pas toujours, dans les personnages qui disparaissaient puis revenaient plus tard… dommage!
  J’ai néanmoins beaucoup aimé le style d’écriture !
• 
  Malene Winther

  En tankevækkende og reflekteret historie om en skjult kvindeverden.
• 
  Wafa

  Dnf
• 
  Tzesi

  A book where you can't help but feel sorry for the main characters.
  
  Two women who have no choice but to obey the patriarchal regime, thus sacrificing their freedom and what they love.
• 
  Ellen

  Women in bad situations making imperfect survival choices. Isma uses another woman's pain as her escape route from her own pain. Touma uses a bad arranged marriage for her daughter to advance her own goals of a better house and better prospects for her other children. Hajila...Hajila goes along with other people's plans for her, and rebels in the tiniest of ways, eventually finding even those avenues closed to her (though she wins, in the end, in a way, by not having to bear her terrible husband's child). All woven through with the story of Scheherazade and her sister, legendary women who outwitted a murderous king, getting him to stop his bloodlust...yet still having to marry and bear children for him and his equally bloodthirsty brother. Beautifully written but kind of grim.
• 
  Grada (BoekenTrol)

  I started reading this book a few years ago, but couldn't get through it.
  This time I had a hard time reading it too. Somehow the style of writing of the author is very confusing to me. I had a hard time figuring out who was telling whose story throughout the whole book.
  The book is about two women who are married to the same man. Accoring to the cover of the book, the first wife tells the story of the second. But, she also mixes that story with her own experiences and that made it very hard to follow the story lines.
  I'm glad I finished it, but I will not give it a try again.
  
• 
  Gerti

  Dieses Buch lässt mich fast sprachlos zurück. Zu schrecklich ist es über diese Kultur zu lesen, die Mädchen ab 10 hinter Mauern der Familie einsperrt. Nur um eines nicht fernen Tages einem Mann anverheiratet zu werden um für alle Zeiten auf Gnade und Verderben ihm ausgeliefert zu sein.
  
  Assia Djerbar schildert dies unaufdringlich und in einer blumigen Sprache und gerade darum ist mir das Schicksal der Frauen so nahe gegangen.
  
  Was bin ich froh, in einem anderen Kulturkreis aufgewachsen zu sein und zu leben.
• 
  Amina

  Dans ce roman, Assia Djebar nous fait voyager au fond d'une Algérie qui m'était jusque là inconnue, décrivant les blessures et les interminables souffrances des femmes Algériennes claustrées à dix ans, interdites de sortir, de sentir le soleil sur leur peau, confinées en harem à seize ans.. Ce roman parle de bataille, de rêve, d'éspoir et de désepoir de femmes qui avec le temps ont même perdu le sens du mot vie..
• 
  Louise

  Somewhat confusing, more like two sets of diary notes, than a story to be conveyed to a reader. Children suddenly appear in the story (who's the mother of Nazim?) and the first part is all in all not a very satisfying read.
  So only one star for that.
  
  The short stories in the second part of the book seem more complete and accessible so 2 start for that.
• 
  Jessica

  Read this in a class that changed my life.....REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MIDDLE EAST>...here I met Edward Said, along with Assia Djebar...film maker and writer....hmmm....so much to say about this...but a woman's love is amazing....
• 
  Jana

  Didn't like it. Bad timing for this book: narration was confusing, and although this is not book's fault, I wanted something not so 'up in the air'. I couldn't relate and it's was quite philosophical. Sadly, really bad timing. I just needed something to relax.
• 
  Hamad

  Poetry in the disguise of prose.
• 
  Naeem

  A young woman returns from Paris to a traditional home somewhere in the middle east. She negotiates her multiple selves and lives.
  
  Made me think.
• 
  Cheryl

  This is an interesting and beautiful read but much of the time the prose gets in the way of the story.
• 
  Carmen Thong

  A somewhat beautifully written, but also somewhat unidimensional portrayal of women confined by the veil. Not very remarkable, nothing too problematic, just a lack of great things overall.
• 
  Yaya

  un livre qui m'a pousse a beaucoup reflaichir sur la situation de la femme Algerienne ainsi qu'aux moeurs, traditions et mode vie des familles Algeriennes en
• 
  Shelby

  /3.5 stars
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  Utilisatrice Introuvable

  Assia Djebar conte comme elle sait si bien le faire les miséres quotidiennes de deux femmes épouses d'un même homme , loin d'être rivales Isma et Hadjila partagent les mêmes peines ,la même révolte.
  Durant l'absence de son "maitre" Hadjila s'aventure dans les ruelles d'Alger pour le simple plaisir de voir des gosses jouer en sentant le vent caresser son visage découvert.
  De par son aspect poetique ce livre vous fera revivre la souffrance de ses dames et la frustrations de la société face à leur révolte