Reviewed by Bob Williams

Learning English
by Rachid al-Daif
Interlink Books
2007, ISBN 978-1-56656-674-2, $12.95, 161 pages

Rachid al-Daif is professor of Arabic literature and the author of several novels – three of which have been translated into English – and of books of poetry.

Al-Daif’s Hero is named Rashid and is professor of Arabic literature in Beirut. He quotes with approval some lines of poetry by Rachid al-Daif. The result is the rather dizzy impression that one gets on one’s looking into a sudden and unexpected mirror.

Rashid is so superficial a character that one wonders at his capacity for such elaborate self-involvement. He delights in all the appurtenances of the twenty-first century, especially the Internet, e-mail, and cellular phones. He has a lover whom he keeps at arm’s length and on whose relationship with him he broods and calculates in a cold-blooded way that makes him very unappealing.

If the English novel is usually a sprawling edifice with variety of character and incidents, the title of this novel becomes ironic since this is a novel in the French manner, a focused and exhaustive examination of one situation as told by a single character or from one point of view. Rather than called Learning English, it could as accurately have been called Writing French.

By accident Rashid learns that his father has been murdered in a blood feud in his native city of Zgharta. As the son of the murder victim he is in great danger of himself falling victim to the vendetta and he considers himself especially vulnerable in Beirut. He determines to go immediately to Zgharta despite the fact that his father has already been buried.

As he tries to call his home he thinks of the tangled and passionate mess that constitutes the history of his mother and father. His father rejected his mother on his discovering that she did not come to the marriage bed a virgin. He abuses her ferociously and accepts as his the only child that she is to bear, the narrator of these events. Rashid’s mother treats him with a coldness that suggests indifference. His uncles, devoted followers of his father, are a group of desperate and violent men. They regard their nephew as degenerate in his affectation of civilization. Despite this alienation Rashid struggles to do what he can to satisfy the demands of his family, enmeshed as he is in a situation not of his making and from which he cannot escape.

The style reflects the tedious character of the narrator. There are many repetitions as Rashid revolves endlessly around the same circumstances, now interpreting them one way and then another.

For readers who have no objection to so austere a novel, this will be an engaging experience.



About the Reviewer: Bob Williams is retired and lives in a small town with his wife, dogs and a cat. He has been collecting books all his life, and has done freelance writing, mostly on classical music. His principal interests are James Joyce, Jane Austen and Homer. His writings, two books and a number of short articles on Joyce, can be accessed at: http://www.grand-teton.com/service/Persons_Places

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