Straight from the Horse’s Mouth (304 pages; Other Press; translated by Emma Ramadan) was originally published in French as La vérité sort de la bouche du cheval by Éditions Gallimard, Paris, in 2018. One reads a tremendous amount of work in translation these days, and it is a bounty, what translators make possible for us. I am forever grateful, and particularly, most recently, for this first novel by the Moroccan-born writer Meryem Alaoui. The novel is a vivid, and vividly angry, first-person portrait of Jmiaa, now thirty-four, but forced into prostitution by her destitute husband before she is twenty. Jmiaa […]
‘Straight from the Horse’s Mouth’ by Meryem Alaoui: Vivid and Vividly Angry
by Michelle Latiolais
