Can I read The Sand Child on EtoBox?

The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun is a work of fiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Sand Child about?

Drawing on the rich Arabic oral tradition, Ben Jelloun tells a story of power, colonialism, gender, and sexual identity in North Africa. In this lyrical, hallucinatory novel set in Morocco, Tahar Ben Jelloun offers an imaginative and radical critique of contemporary Arab social customs and Islamic law. The Sand Child tells the story of a Moroccan father's effort to thwart the consequences of Islam's inheritance laws regarding female offspring. Already the father of seven daughters, Hajji Ahmed determines that his eighth child will be a male. Accordingly, the infant, a girl, is named Mohammed Ahmed and raised as a young man with all the privileges granted exclusively to men in traditional Arab-Islamic societies. As she matures, however, Ahmed's desire to have children marks the beginning of her sexual evolution, and as a woman named Zahra, Ahmed begins to explore her true sexual identity. Drawing on the rich Arabic oral tradition, Ben Jelloun relates the extraordinary events of Ahmed's life through a professional storyteller and the listeners who have gathered in a Marrakesh market square in the 1950s to hear his tale. A poetic vision of power, colonialism, and gender in North Afric

Who reads The Sand Child?

Author

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Published

2023

Language

EN

ISBN

9780801864407

Category

work of fiction

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Romance, Fiction

Rating

3.5 / 5 (669 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14