Brotherhood
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
WINNER of the French Voices Grand Prize, Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and Grand Prix du Roman Métis
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's searing and thought-provoking debut novel, Brotherhood takes place in the imaginary town of Kalep, where a fundamentalist Islamist government has spread its brutal authority.
Under the regime of the so-called Brotherhood, two young people are publicly executed for having loved each other. In response, their mothers begin a secret correspondence, their only outlet for the grief they share and each woman's personal reckoning with a leadership that would take her beloved child's life.
At the same time, spurred on by their indignation at what seems to be an escalation of The Brotherhood's brutality, a band of intellectuals and free-thinkers seeks to awaken the conscience of the cowed populace and foment rebellion by publishing an underground newspaper. While they grapple with the implications of what they have done, the regime's brutal leader begins a personal crusade to find the responsible parties, and bring them to his own sense of justice.
In this brilliant analysis of tyranny and brutality, Mbougar Sarr explores the ways in which resistance and heroism can often give way to cowardice, all while giving voice to the moral ambiguities and personal struggles involved in each of his characters' search to impose the values they hold most dear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Senegalese writer Sarr's harrowing English-language debut follows a fundamentalist Islamic organization and the ragtag group of intellectuals intent on challenging its religious orthodoxy. In Kalep, Sumal, a fictional North African desert town, a group called the Brotherhood has taken root. Backed by a powerful military force, the Brotherhood is led by police chief Abdel Karim, who rules with an iron fist, executing young lovers accused of adultery and ordering the vicious beating of an absentminded woman who forgets to shroud herself in a hijab. Within this repressive society, a group of intellectuals develops an underground political journal called Rambaaj that's aimed at stoking resistance. But instead of fomenting opposition, the paper sows seeds of discord. Greed and backbiting ensue as the Brotherhood rewards citizens who turn in readers of Rambaaj and journalists ruminate on the moral responsibility of their ideas while a burgeoning backlash threatens to divide them. Meanwhile, the haughty Karim burns down a cultural jewel, a well-known Sumalese library, in an attempt to winnow out the resistance journalists. Haunting philosophical questions demonstrate Sarr's powers, and his story succeeds in speaking to both the reader's head and heart. This introduces a vital new voice to American readers.
