Writing, meaning, and history are a trinity that Nizar Shagrun constantly shifts between from one novel to another, as if his concern is to infuse the present with life in order to justify existence. In this novel, meaning comes to us from another realm, a realm where it has ended, and yet it begins. Have you ever heard of a dead man returning to defend his meaning?
A young intellectual, haunted by a sense of loss like most of his generation in an age of “liquid modernity,” “liquid identities,” and “liquid futures,” decides to recover what he has lost and delve into his distant roots.
God warned him against traveling to the East, because in his view, the East is a swamp of hopes and a poem of dreamers. but he insisted on traveling to delve into the history of his Fatimid ancestors, and all he delved into was himself. He returned as a lifeless corpse that puzzled the coroner and puzzled us along with him, because he did not prepare her for burial, but rather for her soul to fly invisibly through the city and recount what happened to us. Must we die in order to be liberated and tell our story without embellishment or masks? Or is death the fate of everyone who sets out on a journey into themselves in a world that separates us from ourselves day after day?
