An accomplished, provocative novel about the strained relationship between a Moroccan husband and wife
Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun has contributed a series of important works to French literature, perhaps foremost among them the brilliant Impac-winning “non-fiction novel” of incarceration, This Blinding Absence of Light. His latest novel, The Happy Marriage, bears echoes of Tolstoy’s grim relationship-degeneration short story “Happy Ever After”, but Jelloun’s tale is thrown into question by a counternarrative.
Our protagonist is semi-paralysed, recovering from a stroke, his face twisted. He is a successful artist who counts Delacroix and Buñuel among his mental companions, a demanding perfectionist who now struggles to move his fingers while watching athletics on TV. His musings on deterioration and dependency – “When your life is in someone else’s hands, is it still a life?” – form the backdrop to his memories of a two-decade marriage, experienced in Paris and Casablanca, in sickness and health.
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