The Bleeding of the Stone (Interlink World Fiction)
In the mountainous desert region of south Libya lives the legendarymoufflon, a wild sheep whose meat is highly valued. Countless hunters search for the moufflon, but only Asouf, a solitary bedouin living in the desert, knows where the animals hide. When two foreign hunters (who have already decimated the once-thriving gazelle population) order Asouf to show them the moufflon, he resists out of reverence for the desert and its creatures. Asouf has cut himself off from humanity--believing, like his father, that "people eat people"--and his encounters with the hunters do nothing to change his mind. But a price must be paid for shunning human contact, and the true quest, the author suggests, is to find a balance. Al-Koni, Libya's best-known novelist, demonstrates his signature version of magic realism in this moving short novel, ably blending reality, fantasy, and mysticism. Readers of Garcia Marquez and Allende will want to know about al-Koni.Beth WarrellCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved