The story of Salim's 18 year imprisonment in a pitch black cell in a Moroccan desert prison after his involvement in an attempted coup d'etat in 1971, based on a man's real-life experience, this should be a depressing read. Yet it isn't. It's a story of survival, faith and family as well as a tale of inhumanity and death. Jelloun uses a sparse yet effective style that effectively conveys the complexities and ambiguities of Salim's character. I found this sparseness difficult to get into for the first few pages but after that felt entirely drawn into the story. So much so that I started and finished it today. ( )

This is a truly haunting tale, recounting an 18 year imprisonment for one of less than a dozen mid-level soldiers involved in an attempted coup attempt. The book is historical fiction, but tells a true tale that was secret until the 1990's when public pressure escalated that ended up forcing the regime to free the prisoners. The authoritarian regime in Morocco that foiled the coup engaged in some very brutal techniques and isolation underground of the prisoners.

The book is really a tale of survival, mental, physiological, spiritual, and psychological competence and survival strategies. The author manages the common challenge when writing a 1st person recount of a many year history of how to jump from year to year by interspersing vignettes of the past and what led the participants to their current imprisonment. ( )

Can anything so horrific, so dark, so degrading, yet actually be a joy to read? This Moroccan writer supplies the reader with gorgeous prose, imagery and mirrors the deepest parts of a human soul with this wonderful book.

Jelloun supplies the reader with a testament to human strength and survival with this fictionalized version of a true event – a man’s tormented 18 years in a black hole, in a prison in Morocco called Tazmamart (1973-1991).

The prison cell is without light, 10x5 feet, with a ventilation hole and a small hole for his excrement. Full of scorpions, cockroaches and subject to the heat and cold of the seasons, the occupant survives at the edge of death, half starved, without exercise and without light. When he finally emerges, he is a broken man, a foot shorter and riddled with medical problems. Most of the men did not survive.

For such an absolutely terrifying topic, the prose is crisp and forgiving and non-judgmental. Jelloun has a true gift for probing the depths of human character. He does not lecture, throw political arrows or in any way proselytize – he manages to convey the hopelessness, torment and human degradation in a way that is so much more effective than angry rhetoric can ever convey. Ultimately, the Islamic religion suffuses his life as his body begins to decay and wither away.

Highly recommended. ( )

Chilling tale of one of the few survivors of the secret prison in Tazmamart, Morocco. The book is called a novel, but is based on the true story of a group of young officers who took part in a failed coup in 1971 in Rabat. They were imprisoned, but after a year or so transferred to a secret prison in Tazmamart, a place in the desert. They were kept in tiny cells, that looked more like big graves than rooms (there was no light for example), and given no more than the very bare minimum to survive. Over the years most of them died of horrible diseases or simply of despair and loss of hope. The main character of this book describes how he survived 18 years of this hell because of his mental strength and his faith in Allah.
It is difficult to even try to imagine what it must have been like to have to survive these chilling circumstances. However, Tahar Ben Jelloun has found a way to at least let you get very close to this cruel reality. The prose is very bare and simple yet effective.
I love to read to imagine other realities. This is one of the most gruesome realities I have ever encountered, even more so because this is based on a true story. ( )