Reviews
Rakha pushes these transgressions further through his use of language. By blending vernacular Arabic with the standard and the religious, Rakha initiates us into a world where change can be enacted through the words we choose to utter. Rakha blurs the lines of language, dialect, life, family, memory, and desire—not only in content but in form and style.
Rakha’s The Dissenters swoons, caresses, jabs, and—once the last page turns—haunts. A novel for anyone who knows what it means to have believed in something. A partner, a revolution, a god. To have believed and then ended up naked and bruised by the wayside.
Now in his late forties, Nour has reached the conclusion that the only way he can know himself is “by finding out how the story of [Mouna’s] life is the history of this country”. His letters to his sister about the Jumpers are the only thing that can assuage Mouna’s look of “grief, hatred, and letdown”. For Youssef Rakha, who is a similar age to Nour, this powerful, shimmering and clever novel may fulfil an equivalent function. It is worthwhile to witness, even when there is so little hope of change