The Sand Child in Around the World in 80 Books

Jun 15, 2022 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: author-man, a-reviewed, z-read-gelesen-2022, author-ofcolour, transl-french, publdate-1980s, world-morocco, zchallenge-readtheworld22

The first third of this book was intriguing. It's not spoilering (as it happens at the start and is the entire premise of the novel) to say that it concerns the eighth child in a family of seven daughters, and the father, desperate to have a son and heir, declares this eighth child to be a boy although it is born with female genitals. This is, as such, an interesting premise as it not only throws up intriguing plot possibilities but also philosophical questions. The child is not cis because it w The first third of this book was intriguing. It's not spoilering (as it happens at the start and is the entire premise of the novel) to say that it concerns the eighth child in a family of seven daughters, and the father, desperate to have a son and heir, declares this eighth child to be a boy although it is born with female genitals. This is, as such, an interesting premise as it not only throws up intriguing plot possibilities but also philosophical questions. The child is not cis because it was assigned male at birth while presenting as female (although technically, if the child grew up to identify as male, we could then call this female body a cis man). When the adult person discovers their femaleness, do we then call them a trans woman (although born a woman but not assigned female at birth)? And the whole 'am I in myself, subjectively, a man or a woman' versus 'society tells me that I am so and so; society favours men in this patriarchal set-up so I'd rather be a man' is, as such, promisingly complex.

However, the book chooses not to go down the plot avenue and it also chooses not to explore the abovementioned issues. Or rather, it does explore them but not in a way that is to my liking.

Plot avenue: there isn't one. If you enjoy meandering High Literary Fiction, then you might enjoy reading the non sequiturish tales nested within tales, with random (to me) secondary and tertiary characters weighing in with random (to me) tales that (maybe?) want to be Boccaccio or Shahrazad but end up as neither. This aspect I found really hard and (to me) boring. There is one interesting episode, when the main character marries a woman -- but again, I did not find this was explored enough.

The main ideas that do get explored are to do with sexuality but I often felt that the people were reduced to their sexualities. The man/woman Ahmed-Zahra (Alpha-Omega) goes out on the streets and actually enjoys being pawed by strangers and patted on the bum because it is the only human contact they get to enjoy as they are now an 'old maid'. They have sexual organs but these have 'never been used' (that is, never been penetrated by a penis - cue tedious yawn on my side).

(view spoiler)

The lyrical nostalgia felt when visiting the Al Hambra and Cordóba is lovely, and I also found it interesting to read about Andalusia from a North African and Muslim point of view, as a land of poetry, philosophy, music and science, lost to the infidels' cross.

I read the German hardback edition by Rotbuch Verlag (not available via Goodreads). It has a gorgeous cover (which partly incited me to buy), using an Orientalist painting by Ludwig Deutsch, 'Vor dem Palast' (c. 1895). The endpapers contain a qu'ran surah of the 18th C (calligraphy) and the frontispiece a call to prayer with the calligraphy in the shape of a bird. The typeface (uncredited) has curlicue g's, extravagant ?'s and spike-tailed y's.

I can now colour in Morocco on my reading map of the world. ...more

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