Abu musa´s women neighbors

Fiction. Middle Eastern Studies. ABU MUSA’S WOMEN NEIGHBORS is a tale of political intrigue, whose themes of power and its abuses and the relationship between the secular and the sacred are as much a part of today’s Arab world as they were in the pre-modern era it describes. Beginning in the 14th century port city of Sale, the novel follows the circuitous path of the beautiful and virtuous Shamah, whose sudden rise from cowherd’s daughter to wide of a the Sultan’s counsel leads her through teh cloistered ways of palace ladies into a teeming world of corruption, adventure, and tests of faith. Ahmed Toufiq is Minister of Habous and Islamic Affairds for the government of Morocco.

«ABU MUSA’S WOMEN NEIGHBORS reinvents the genre of hagiographic and mystical tales in the contemporary form of an Arabic novel. At the threshold of history and fiction (the author is also a historian), it pushes the limits of both, towards an artistic creation which is at once a vivid restitution of life, and a journey into the intricacies of the human soul, the passions and abuses of power and government, the enigma of destiny. Yet, unlike other contemporary reinvestments of vernacular and mystical themes in Maghribi literature, this text is not addressed to a European or a nostalgic gaze. Ahmed Toufiq writes for his fellow citizens, his ‘neighbors.'»—Stefania Pandolfo