The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman

This autobiographical novel, which first appeared to great acclaim in France, charts the sexual exploits of Badra, a devout Muslim who escapes her arranged and loveless marriage to live with an aunt in Tangier during the 1960s. France has withdrawn from Morocco, but the city Badra is inadvertently exposed to currents of the rising counterculture, including feminism. Then she meets Driss, an older European-educated doctor who serves as her erotic mentor, awakening her true carnal self and her awareness of her enormous sexual power. Reminiscent of Marguerite Duras's The Lover , the story is told by a wiser, older narrator recalling her reckless youth with envy. "Nedjma," the novel's pseudonymous Moroccan author, has a gift for turning a beautiful phrase obscene and vice versa—sustaining the title's metaphor for genitalia for over 200 pages is no easy feat. In some senses, her story appeals directly to Western fantasies—liberating the Muslim woman from her veil—and it is easy to see how such a book would gain approval from a French or American audience. Yet the novel is so genuinely artful, so emotionally sincere, that the racy subject matter is eclipsed by its stunning prose. Agent, Rebecca Byers. (June)