Les Humiliées by Koumanthio Zeinab Diallo

Guinean family outdoors in conversation on cover of book, held against plant

a nutshell: set in a village in the Republic of Guinea, this powerful play sets out to combat all forms of violence against women and remove political/legal barriers to women’s full participation in decision-making

a line: “N’est-ce pas comme un objet qu’on achète et dont on se sert pour le jeter ensuite?” | “Isn’t it like an object that we buy and use then throw it away?”

an image: at one point Soro (from the older generation) says his father liked to say a woman is like a goat – if you play with her, she’ll bite you one day, so a husband must always make them fear him and never laugh with them since they are devils

a thought: the playwright highlights the immense pressure on women to give their husbands sons, i.e. heirs, and how this makes them ‘true women’ – Mariama’s attempt to convey that it wasn’t her fault she gave birth to daughters elicits a furious response

a fact: in the introduction Diallo shares that this subject matter was drawn from her own sister’s distress & silencing after being disowned by her husband

want to read Les Humiliées? visit here

Bride and Groom by Alisa Ganieva (tr. Carol Apollonio)

a nutshell: set in a Dagestani village, this incisive novel explores conflicts between tradition and modernisation through the lens of tussling approaches to marriage – it’s a love story with more twists & turns than most

a line“Without mutations though,” I interrupted, “there is no evolution.” Total silence.

an image: just before our narrator Patya interrupts (above), we’re subjected to the Wahhabi fundamentalist Timur’s sermon on how Western vice causes mutations that lead people astray – “especially girls, with their weaker minds”

a thought: Sufism is an essential subtext of Bride and Groom, with the plot resembling the path of a Sufi to the Absolute and interweaving various Sufi symbols (wine, the sea, a dot); one must seek complete knowledge of being and ultimately merge with God

a fact: Ganieva published her first fictional work (Salam, Dalgat!) under a male pseudonym, revealing her identity at the 2009 awards ceremony of the prestigious Debut Prize which she won

 

want to read Bride and Groom? visit here