Asouf lives alone in the desert. He cares for massive, ancient rock paintings and guides the tourists who venture to see them. He alone knows where to find the sacred waddan, “a kind of wild mountain sheep … the oldest animal in the Sahara.” In The Bleeding of the Stone, the first novel of prolific Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni to be translated into English (by May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley), Asouf faces dangerous beasts and bloodthirsty hunters. The entire novel reads like a dream or an extended fable, with an unearthly quality to it. It’s strange and beautiful and magical and tragic.Other reviews:
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Kirkus Reviews: “A winning combination of ecological fable, political statement, and lyrical lament for the past… The story’s melodramatic apocalyptic finale seems slightly forced, but in no way dissipates the power of al-Koni’s subtle dramatization of irreconcilable cultural misunderstanding and enmity.”
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Ann Morgan, A Year of Reading the World: “Al-Koni pushes the spiritual aspect of the natural world into the realm of magical realism, introducing a series of strange interludes in which gazelles speak and waddan (the ancient desert sheep that roam the mountain ranges) assume mystical powers… They all work to further the sense of wonder and wistfulness for a shrinking way of life that pervades the text.”
This is book #49 in my effort to read a book by an author from every African country in 2019. You can read reviews of all the books here.
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