The Sand Child

Synopsis

Drawing on the rich Arabic oral tradition, Ben Jelloun tells a story of power, colonialism, gender, and sexual identity in North Africa. In this lyrical, hallucinatory novel set in Morocco, Tahar Ben Jelloun offers an imaginative and radical critique of contemporary Arab social customs and Islamic law. The Sand Child tells the story of a Moroccan father's effort to thwart the consequences of Islam's inheritance laws regarding female offspring. Already the father of seven daughters, Hajji Ahmed determines that his eighth child will be a male.