About My Mother by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Book cover for About My Mother by Tahar Ben Jelloun, with orange decorative borders and a man walking with a child on a sunlit path

Tahar Ben Jelloun’s About My Mother is a profound, semi-autobiographical meditation on the slow decline of a matriarch, the nature of memory, and the intricate bonds of filial love within the context of Moroccan tradition. The narrative, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman, alternates between the narrator’s present-day observations of his …

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A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Tahar Ben Jelloun’s A Palace in the Old Village is a haunting, lyrical exploration of the immigrant experience, the psychological toll of retirement, and the unbridgeable chasm between a traditional past and a modern, assimilated future. The novel follows Mohammed, a Moroccan immigrant who has spent forty years as a meticulous and conscientious worker in …

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