Mimoun by Rafael Chirbes

A Spanish teacher arrives in Morocco with the vague aim of finishing a novel. He settles in Mimoun, a village in the Atlas Mountains, where a strange web of relationships in which the characters move, stumble and disappear like in a game of pool hangs over him.

For Manuel, the narrator-protagonist, Francisco, Hassan, Aixa, Rachida and Charpent are enigmatic beings on whom he projects his own bewilderment. But it is Charpent, a mysterious exile, who, through his self-sabotaging ways, offers Manuel the exact contrast to his own destiny. As Rilke states, “Oh, Lord, give each person his own personal death”.

Mimoun’s Morocco is not exotic; it’s a beating, hostile place where the characters search for the strength needed to continue living. Although it is written in a restrained, more implicit than indicative style, it is also a tense and passionate story that does not hide its cathartic ambition.