cover image Lion Mountain

Lion Mountain

Mustapha Tlili. Arcade Publishing, $18.45 (180pp) ISBN 978-1-55970-056-6

In his commitment to justice, exploration of evil, contemplation of man's alienation and heavy use of symbolism, Tlili, Tunisian author of three novels published in French, has inherited much from Algerian-born Albert Camus. Like the town whose citizens assert their fraternity and human dignity when confronted with an epidemic in Camus's La Peste , Lion Mountain is an isolated North African village whose inhabitants are called upon to resist the plague-like infiltration of a tyrannical State. The village is a harmonious gemeinschaft ; its mosque which instills spiritual well-being, stream which irrigates the fields, and heritage bequeathed by warrior-lord ancestors, govern everyone's lives. Horia El-Gharib, the fiery, devout heroine who embodies the town's values, resists the satanic Party that invades this innocent Eden, obstructing nature, replacing God and imposing Westernization. Examining Tunisia under French rule and after independence in 1956 in this thinly veiled historical novel, Tlili's moral message may be old news, but his fresh, imaginative descriptions empower this work with magic, myth and poetry. (May)