The Confines of the Shadow by Alessandro Spina - book review: Experimental tales from Libya to Lombardy
Translated by André Naffis-Sahely, these stories experiment with alternatives to realism
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference."Civilisation," muses the fretful wife of an Italian governor in early-1920s Libya, means no more than "the rubble on which others will build another edifice once they've reconquered their freedom".
Even if they did not take place mostly in Benghazi, these tales of an Arab land under European rule would still have a salutary relevance today. Whatever happens in the Westernised city, "a graceful little fable fenced off from the outside world", in the desert hinterland, tribal traditions that "nobody could uproot" hold firm. Cameron, Sarkozy and their allies could have profitably read these stories of colonial hubris and nemesis in Libya before they ousted Gaddafi.
"Alessandro Spina" was the pen-name of Basili Shafik Khouzam, a Syrian Christian born in Italian-occupied Benghazi in 1927. After study in Italy, he managed the family textile factory in Libya until Gaddafi's revolution drove him into exile in Lombardy. During and after his business career, he wrote novels and stories that drew on the Italian invasion of 1911 and its bloody aftermath to reflect on the forced encounter between cultures.
Heroically, André Naffis-Sahely has now begun to translate Spina's vast narrative patchwork of Italy's Libyan adventure. This first instalment of three gathers works written after 1964: two short novels, The Young Maronite and The Marriage of Omar, and a story: "The Nocturnal Visitor".
Don't expect from Spina polished late-imperial romance of the sort that fans of the twilight-of-the-Raj school, from Paul Scott to Vikram Seth, know and love. True, he does create Forsterian figures, anguished doubters torn between two worlds: Hassan, or Captain Martello, whose "identity crisis" drives him to vanish amid the ruins of ancient Cyrene. Repeatedly, the Italian officer class discovers that "the other's truth imperils our own".
But these stories also experiment with alternatives to realism. So The Young Maronite begins with a lurid variant of an Arabian Nights tale, as the child bride of mighty but lonely Hajji Semereth falls for a servant boy. Interrupting this retro yarn, the Italians often converse in stilted comedy-of-ideas dialogue – somewhere between Shaw and Pirandello. Meanwhile, Spina's favourite metaphor depicts colonial life as an opera: part-Verdi, part-Rossini, part-Mozart, played out as melodrama on a "little golden stage" of deluded privilege.
Even though Naffis-Sahely tracks these shifts of register with skill, you feel that Spina may be finding his feet as a narrator. The Marriage of Omar achieves a more fluent style, as it explores the dialectical intimacy of ruler and ruled. "Oppression is an injustice," reflects governor Alonzo, "and injustice is the fatal link that binds us."
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments