Special bilingual edition

Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

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Banquet of Lies is the story of Koussaila or ‘Nems’ (weasel), and the awakening of his unbridled passion for older women. In spite of the fact that his family is Sharif, direct descended from the prophet Muhammad, Koussaila cannot resist seeking forbidden pleasure in the arms of inappropriate women; his aunt, a cleaning lady, a Jewish neighbour and even a Catholic nun.

After his first sexual experience, on the same day as Algeria’s 1965 coup d’état, Koussaila continues on a chaotic path of desire, self-disgust, literature and sex, trying to reconcile the world of Islam (in the pages of the Koran) with that of the ‘Roumis’; Europeans (in the pages of Les Fleurs du Mal and Madame Bovary).

AMIN ZAOUI is a writer and bilingual scholar (Arabic and French). He is currently in charge of the National Library in Algiers, and is the author of five novels which have been translated into a dozen languages, but never before into English.

'B+ It makes for a lot of overwrought writing, but for long stretches it's surprisingly engaging...an odd -- and sexually excessive (and bizarre) -- testament of the times, but there's something to it. Admirably, the English edition is, in fact, a bilingual one. Frank Wynne's translation reads well, but with language like this there's a lot to be said for having the original side by side with the translated text.' – Complete Review

ISBN: 978-0-7145-3160-1
Pub Date: 21 May 2008
Price: £9.99/ $14.95
FICTION