Michael T. Luongo talks with Abdellah Taïa in the current issue of Gay City News. It's worth reading, though I am sure I will read his novel, Salvation Army (Semiotexte, 2009, 152p), just published in the US. The translation is by Frank Stock and there is an introduction by Edmund White.
The 35-year-old Moroccan author has been living in France since 1998 and writes in French. Salvation Army is his latest novel and the first to be translated into English.
The Associated Press has written:
As Morocco's first high-profile, openly gay man, Taïa has made it his mission to win acceptance for homosexuals throughout the Muslim world.
Taïa has defied Moroccan society's don't-ask, don't-tell attitude toward homosexuality — and prison sentences that are still on the books in the North African kingdom — to write five autobiographical novels about growing up poor and gay in the northern coastal city of Sale.
The novels, peppered with sexually explicit passages, have catapulted him to fame in his native country and made him the de-facto poster child of its budding gay rights movement.
Taïa has defied Moroccan society's don't-ask, don't-tell attitude toward homosexuality — and prison sentences that are still on the books in the North African kingdom — to write five autobiographical novels about growing up poor and gay in the northern coastal city of Sale.
The novels, peppered with sexually explicit passages, have catapulted him to fame in his native country and made him the de-facto poster child of its budding gay rights movement.
