The topical interest of Laila Lalami's might present a danger of obscuring its literary merit if it were not so beautifully written. This compact book of less than 200 pages presents snapshots in the lives of four Moroccans who attempt the dangerous illegal crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar in search of a better life in Spain. The results are ambiguous and poignant.
Phillip Kurata's dissects the slimy underbelly of a thinly fictionalized Tunisian police state. His naive, self-centered protagonist, Habib Ben Hamed, is quickly in over his head as his brother lures him into becoming an agent of the national police, a job for which his basic decency renders him completely unsuitable. This hard-boiled novel provides an unblinking look at the brutality of the modern police state, also a topic of considerable contemporary interest as Morocco reflects on the Years of Lead and on its own current human rights record.
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