Messaouda

In this autobiographical first novel, a Moroccan boy grows up in a small town in the Atlas Mountains, hating his father, a philanderer and bully. The father de serts the family and repudiates his wife ""to chase his dreams and madness'' in a town famous for its prostitution. Village society, seen as pathologically patriar chal and morally bankrupt, likewise re jects the mother and children. The au thor uses the parents' tormented relationship to symbolize the decadence of Moroccan peasant culture and the baneful effects of French political and cultural domination. A literature profes sor in Morocco, Serhane has tried to draw from both Arabic and European literary traditions, but his writing is of ten repetitious and unpersuasive. Never theless, this book has power, which de rives from its unblinking description of a violent, sexually squalid way of life. (November 17