ENDINGS

A struggling community battles the elements in this unpredictable novel.

Finding a balance between the conscious use of narrative archetypes and a more experimental structure can be difficult for most novelists. In his terse and often harrowing novel, the late Saudi Arabian writer Munif finds a surprising way to keep the two in sync. In the beginning, the novel focuses on the rural village of al-Tiba. “Al-Tiba also had its share of weddings, joys and sorrows too,” Munif writes. “More often than not, the weddings came after the harvest. When there was no rain and the ground became parched, the sad times came.” Munif starts by focusing on the life of the community as a whole, as al-Tiba contends with a drought that threatens the lives of all its residents. An outspoken man named 'Assaf emerges as the center of the narrative, urging a risky venture to go into the desert in search of food. The man-versus-nature setup feels timeless, but the presence of Jeeps begins to root the story to a particular time. The trip into the desert ends with a surprising fate for one of the men involved, and before long, the narrative itself has taken another turn. In the wake of death, the survivors gather and begin telling stories, which fill the rest of the book. It’s an abrupt shift, but it’s also one that links up with a motif about storytelling and traditions that runs throughout the book. Here, what had been a fairly straightforward narrative transforms and takes on new gradations; the result is unpredictable but also deeply compelling.

A risk-taking novel that offers a comprehensive portrait of a community.