About
Author: Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya)
Genre: Mythological Fiction
Setting
Place: Sahara Desert
Time: Once upon a time
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 2
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 2.21
Introduction:
“…a chase across the desert is always a metaphysical quest.”
– Translator’s note
Anubis, in Egyptian mythology, is a guide to the underworld. Anubi, the name of the protagonist of the story, means a child of an unknown father. This novel is about Anubi’s search for his father, guided (or misguided) by prophecies and Jinns – which acts as a metaphor to humanity’s search for meaning
Review:
Novels of the magic realism genre often take some time for the readers to find a footing in as the readers must figure out the psychics and the rules of the new magical reality.
Anubis – which delves in the mythology of the Tuareg peoples is filled with magic – metamorphosized gazelles and rams, priests who can bring back the dead, jinns who only speak in riddles among others. Set in the beautifully described Sahara desert however, the book make finding a footing in the story as difficult as it would be in the shifting sands of the Sahara. For instance, I could never really work out how time flowed in the story. Perhaps it was intentional – to reflect the difficulties of humankind’s quest to understand the universe. But it just left me unable to enjoy the reading experience. When over time, I did start making some sense of the metaphors – I was well ahead into the story and even the book’s beautiful language wasn’t sufficient to entice me to read it again. Maybe sometime in the future then!
