Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor’s Foreword
- 1 From Tahrir to Terror: Neo-Orientalism and the ‘Arab Spring’
- 2 The Arab Uprisings and the Western Literary Market
- 3 Precarity Far and Near: The Arab Uprisings in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Par le feu and Jonas Lüscher’s Frühling der Barbaren
- 4 Affective Masculinity and the Arab Uprisings: Adam Thirlwell’s Kapow! and Jochen Beyse’s Rebellion
- 5 Figurations of Terror: The Islamist Rage Boy in Karim Alrawi’s Book of Sands and Mathias Énard’s Rue des voleurs
- 6 The Arab Uprisings between Inequality, Insecurity and Identity
- References
- Index
3 - Precarity Far and Near: The Arab Uprisings in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Par le feu and Jonas Lüscher’s Frühling der Barbaren
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor’s Foreword
- 1 From Tahrir to Terror: Neo-Orientalism and the ‘Arab Spring’
- 2 The Arab Uprisings and the Western Literary Market
- 3 Precarity Far and Near: The Arab Uprisings in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Par le feu and Jonas Lüscher’s Frühling der Barbaren
- 4 Affective Masculinity and the Arab Uprisings: Adam Thirlwell’s Kapow! and Jochen Beyse’s Rebellion
- 5 Figurations of Terror: The Islamist Rage Boy in Karim Alrawi’s Book of Sands and Mathias Énard’s Rue des voleurs
- 6 The Arab Uprisings between Inequality, Insecurity and Identity
- References
- Index
Summary
The THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS RESORT in the oasis at Tschub was modelled on a nomadic Berber settlement – or, to be more precise, on what market researchers thought a first-class tourist to Tunisia might imagine when he pictured a typical Berber settlement. Assuming, that is, he could picture such a thing at all and wasn’t, impartial as a blank sheet of paper and receptive as an empty vessel, simply being spoon-fed ideas by a world-renowned resort designer from Magdeburg …
The camel-driver was leading the beast by its reins. Jenny had made him swap his Rooney football shirt for a costume that she’d got an intern from the trading floor – who’d vainly hoped to get an invitation to the wedding in return – to copy from pictures of Tuareg horsemen in a travel brochure. She was pleased with the outcome; Kelly’s white dress was set off wonderfully by the man’s indigo-coloured robes, exactly the effect she’d intended. It also confirmed that she’d been right to pooh-pooh the intern’s objections that there weren’t actually any Tuareg in Tunisia.
But as he attempted to lead the camel up the two steps onto the stage, the fake desert warrior, his vision obscured by the unfamiliar headdress, stumbled and tripped over the over-long hem of his indigo-blue robes. This so alarmed the camel that it refused point-blank to go any further. Nor could it be persuaded to kneel down in the usual way to allow the bride to dismount with dignity. The camel-driver tried cajoling the beast, then resorted to tugging it ever more impatiently by the reins, as Quicky began kicking the back of its knees.
Palm trees, exotic lighting, mysterious music, stunning colours, a scared camel, a stumbling camel-driver and a choleric ex-soldier: one of the key scenes in Jonas L üscher’s Barbarian Spring, the wedding of two London City traders at a Tunisian desert luxury resort, ironically amasses Orientalist fantasies and juxtaposes them with the reality of their exploitative and uncompromising commodification. In the stylised setting of the resort, a camel-driver is paid to perform an Otherness which fulfils the exoticising expectations of the Western customers.
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- Literary Neo-Orientalism and the Arab UprisingsTensions in English, French and German Language Fiction, pp. 53 - 100Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022