Novel
L'Œil du jour
Not translated into English
Hélé Béji · 1985
Synopsis
Back in Tunis, a narrator who lives in Paris and has taught at university spends her last day before leaving in her grandmother's house, in the heart of the old medina, from sunrise to sunset. Little happens: she looks at the house, her family, the city, and this grandmother of faith and rootedness whom she sets against her own life. Outside, a customs officer or a colleague gives her material for satire, while she discovers herself a stranger on both sides of the Mediterranean.
Context
The novel, the author's first, appeared in Paris from Maurice Nadeau in 1985, in two hundred and fifty-two pages, three years after her first essay, devoted to decolonisation. Written in the first person, it takes place within a single day. Critics note the contrast between the welcoming interior of the family home and the harshness of the outside world, as well as an influence of Proust, the grandmother standing in for the madeleine; they also read in it an ironic portrait of Tunisian society after independence, deprived of freedom of expression. Béji published a second novel, a satirical one, in 1992.
Who it is for
A novel of a single day, without a plot in the strict sense, for readers drawn to a meditative and ironic prose.
Prizes and reception
First novel by an essayist already known for her critique of decolonisation; studied in Porto and Milan.
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