I have now in the last few weeks read a novel by a British author that takes place in a North African colony, an Egyptian novel that takes place during British colonial rule, and now an American novel that takes place in French North Africa in the 1940s. There’s not really a consistent narrative thread or theme going along through all these, but some patterns have developed. For one, in each novel, there’s a Western presence seen in each novel as a vulgar/profane inhabitant of […]