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A Land Without Jasmine
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A Land Without Jasmine
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A Land Without Jasmine
Ebook99 pages1 hour

A Land Without Jasmine

By Wajdi Al-Ahdal

3.5/5

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About this ebook

A Land without Jasmine is a sexy, satirical detective story about the sudden disappearance of a young female student from Yemen's Sanaa University. Each chapter is narrated by a different character beginning with Jasmine herself. The mystery surrounding her disappearance comes into clearer focus with each self-serving and idiosyncratic account provided by an acquaintance, family member, or detective. As the details surrounding her sudden disappearance emerge the mystery deepens. Sexual depravity, honour, obsession; the motives are numerous and the suspects plentiful. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the charming young student. Family, friends, fellow students and nosey neighbours are quick to make their own judgements on the case, but the truth may be far stranger than anyone anticipates. This short novel has echoes of both the Sherlock Holmes stories and The Catcher in the Rye, as in addition to the mystery and a murder, the novel contains candid discussions of coming of age in a land of sexual repression. Wajdi al-Ahdal is a satirical author with a fresh and provocative voice and an excellent eye for telling the details of his world.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherGarnet Publishing
Release dateSep 6, 2012
ISBN9781859643129
Unavailable
A Land Without Jasmine
Author

Wajdi Al-Ahdal

Wajdi al-Ahdal is a Yemeni novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and dramatist. He is the author of several collections of short stories and four novels, including A Land Without Jasmine (published in English by Garnet, 2012). His novel Mountain Boats was confiscated by the Yemeni Ministry of Culture for insulting ‘morality, religion, and conventions of Yemeni society’, and a campaign against the book drove him into exile for a number of years. He now lives in Saana.

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Reviews for A Land Without Jasmine

3.5/5

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  • 3/5
    I feel like something was lost in translation between me and this book. The blurb described it as a "satirical detective novel", but I think it really helps if you know in advance that it totally subverts the genre by not giving you a satisfying ending. Then again, maybe the different literary tradition of Arabic means the detective genre has different conventions! I don't know.

    Aside from that, though, this is a novella with a social conscience, more a critique of Yemeni society than really a detective novel. I enjoyed it.