Short stories
Le Chapelet d'ambre
Not translated into English
Ahmed Sefrioui · 1949
Synopsis
Fourteen tales born of the old city of Fez and its common people: Quranic school students, donkey drivers, vagrants, pilgrims, mystics, artisans and shopkeepers, slipper-makers, incense sellers, weavers, tanners, potters, silk or mint merchants. Among them are Le cadi et le vagabond, Le sabre de mon frère and Le fqih, in which the most familiar reality mingles with illusions, in a tone shot through with melancholy.
Context
The collection appeared from Julliard in 1949, adorned with fourteen illustrations by its author. The critic Robert Kemp, quoted by the publisher, praised the purity of his French. Le Seuil reissued it in 1964 in its Méditerranée series; it then took fifty years for it to reappear, in Morocco this time, in 2014, with a preface by Anne Sefrioui. According to Britannica, these pages describe those who remained on the margins of French colonial culture.
Who it is for
Fourteen short tales, in precise, vivid prose, which can be read separately; a book long out of print, reissued in Morocco in 2014.
Prizes and reception
Grand prix littéraire du Maroc in 1949, awarded for the first time to a Moroccan, and the Prix Marcelin Guérin of the Académie française the same year.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.