Mohammed Berrada – ‘Far from Clamour, Close to Silence’

From the International Prize for Arabic Fiction official biography and book description:

Mohammed Berrada is a Moroccan writer and critic, born in Rabat in 1938. He holds a doctorate from France in Criticism and Literary Sociology. He writes short stories, novels and literary criticism, and his novels have been translated into English, French and Spanish. He has written six novels: Game of Forgetfulness (1987), The Fleeing Light (1994), Like an Unrepeatable Summer (1999), Woman of Forgetfulness (2002), Neighbouring Lives (2009),translated into French in 2013, and Far from the Clamour, Near to the Silence (2014). He was a judge of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2008, the inaugural year of the prize. He currently lives in Brussels, Belgium.

Looking back over the 50 years that have passed since Moroccan independence, four characters from different generations review their lives. Far from Clamour, Close to Silence’s young hero, Raji, is unemployed, until a historian asks him to canvass people’s views about Morocco’s future. Raji is inspired to write a novel about three different people who, coming from different generations, represent the hopes, ideals and disappointments of three different eras in Moroccan history: pre-independence, post-independence and contemporary Morocco. And so he tells the story of Tawfiq al-Sadiqi, born in 1930s, a lawyer called Falih al-Hamzawi and a psychiatrist, Nabiha Sama’an, born in the 1950s.