Year of the elephant
Subtitle: a Moroccan woman's journey toward independence and other stories
By: by Leila Abouzeid ; translation from the Arabic by Barbara Parmenter ; introduction by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea.
Series: Modern Middle East literature in translation series
Publisher: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the University of Texas at Austin
Published: 1989
Place of publication: Austin, Tex
Language: eng
Number of pages: 103
Description: "In this moving fictional treatment of a Muslim woman's life, a personal and family crisis impells the heroine to reexamine traditional cultural attitudes toward women. Cast out and divorced by her husband, she finds herself in a strange new world. Both obstacles and support systems change as she actively participates in the struggle for Moroccan independence from France. This feminist novel is a literary statement in a modern realist style. Many novels by women of the Middle East that have been translated reflect Western views, values, and education. By contrast, Year of the Elephant is uniquely Moroccan and emerges from North African Islamic culture itself. Its subtle juxtaposition of past and present, of immediate thought and triggered memory, reflects the heroine's interior conflict between tradition and modern demands. The title refers to a famous battle described in the Koran."--Website of University of Texas Press (Oct. 31, 2010).