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Loading... Cousin K (2003)by Yasmina Khadra
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Yasmina Khadra is the female pen name for the male Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul, which he adopted to avoid censorship of the Algerian army. His real identity was only revealed when he moved to France in 2001. This thin, stark novel tells the story of a boy in an Algerian village whose father is killed is a traitor, whose elder brother is often absent with the army, and whose mother is dismissive and neglectful of him. The titular Cousin K is a girl who comes to visit for the summer who becomes the object of the boy's affection, but she in turn is cruel and mocks him. The novel creates a sympathetic portrait of a wounded boy that unravels as he's grows up with shocking results. ( ) no reviews | add a review
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""Such was the battle that raged between Cousin K and me: good done badly; evil done well." So relates the unnamed narrator of Cousin K as he launches into the sad tale of his childhood. With his father brutally killed as a traitor during Algeria's war of independence and his older brother an army officer far away, the young boy lives reclusively with his mother, an unfeeling woman who ignores him entirely. At fourteen he directs his thirst for affection toward his nine-year-old cousin, K, who has come to stay with his family for the summer. But so far from reciprocating his passionate regard for her, the little girl steals the affections of his mother and mocks and humiliates him resulting in his love becoming hopelessly entangled with hatred. Now, fate places a young woman in the narrator's path when he rescues her after a violent attack. From her he once more begs for the love that his mother and K always refused him, and her rejection revives the same hatred and illuminates the permanent emotional scars left on him from a lifetime of emotional neglect and derision, resulting in dire consequences."-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)848Literature French and related languages Miscellaneous French writingsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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