THE LAST CHAPTER
by Leila Abouzeid & translated by Leila Abouzeid & John Liechetyh
An awfully earnest coming-of-age novel from the Moroccan author (who writes in Arabic) of The Year of the Elephant (1989). Its heroine Aisha’s progress from submissiveness to maturity and comparative independence seems a story that has been told too many times in too many books essentially indistinguishable from this one—and the novel is further hampered by undramatized effusions (“A curse on colonialism! Phosphates and tangerines weren’t enough. It needed our souls as well”) in which Abouzeid’s agenda stifles her narrative.