{"id":304076,"date":"2016-04-11T20:29:40","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T20:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2016\/04\/11\/french-perfume-by-amir-tag-elsir-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T14:50:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T14:50:00","slug":"french-perfume-by-amir-tag-elsir-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2016\/04\/11\/french-perfume-by-amir-tag-elsir-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“French Perfume” by Amir Tag Elsir [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win<\/a> series is by Najeebah Al-Ghadban. We will be running two (or more!) of these posts every business day leading up to the announcement of the finalists.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

French Perfume<\/em><\/a> by Amir Tag Elsir, translated from the Arabic by William M. Hutchins (Sudan, Antibookclub)<\/b><\/p>\n

It may be only through humor that one can willingly enter the haze of Amir Tag Elsir\u2019s French Perfume<\/em>. The text\u2014translated from Arabic by the renowned William M. Hutchins, and published by ANTIBOOKCLUB\u2014tugs at the insides of anticipation until they are strewn across a table, staring back at you like doctored images of a woman you have never met but have just married.<\/p>\n

The image is of Katia, a Frenchwoman, but mostly a name, who embodies promise and release for Ali Jarjar, a man who \u201cfrom an early age [. . .] toughened himself by training his bladder\u2019s urinary control, his lungs\u2019 resistance to coughing, and his memory\u2019s avoidance of vagaries.\u201d A man with pride knotted in self-restraint. A man who incessantly dangles himself before the local women \u201cwho sold tea to the poor, women who were maids, and women who were immigrants.\u201d Women he abandons, \u201cenveloped in a warm dream and in the fantasy of a happy life.\u201d Jilted, because like the cracks in the town walls of Gha\u2019ib (or, \u201cNonexistent\u201d) they are easy to overlook yet undeniably there. Women who, much like the ever-present squeaky doors of the neighborhood, denounce intimacy because \u201ca door that opened quietly and smoothly was respected by no one.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Katia is a promise so intoxicating that men die writing poetry for her:<\/p>\n

Beautiful Katia: where are you?
\nWhere is desire for this melancholy flow
\nAnd where is the pure river of letters that will course through
\nyour blood with love and affection?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Katia is the exception, who oils the doors of Gha\u2019ib with the anticipation of her arrival:<\/p>\n

She will make us famous in the whole world by documenting us in a video, she will send us the money necessary to develop the neighborhood and to bury its sewers and fill its potholes, she will care for our stray dogs and cats, she will ask some of us to migrate and live with her in Paris, and perhaps she will fall madly in love with one of us and ask him to marry her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Katia is the Angel, who renames the stores and paints houses blue.<\/p>\n

Katia Cadolet\u2014the image and the undoing.<\/p>\n

Hutchins\u2019s translation of Elsir\u2019s French Perfume<\/em> elicits sense from absurdity. It is a book dominated by fragrance of passion so annihilating because of its very absence. Its scent becomes the promise for the physical, but ultimately lacks the body\u2014leaving only notes of overpowering delusion and heady expectation. It inflames a slow burn of want for the need to touch the intangible. This is a text that deforms the mind as it pulls one into the rituals of preparing for passion\u2014for there is nothing closer to skin than scent, and only at the loss of restraint does reason unravel.<\/p>\n

Why should this book win? Because \u201cit was the desperate hope of a man without any hopes.\u201d And because, once, you too must have loved the image of a ghost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win series is by Najeebah Al-Ghadban. We will be running two (or more!) of these posts every business day leading up to the announcement of the finalists.   French Perfume by Amir Tag Elsir, translated from the Arabic by William M. Hutchins (Sudan, Antibookclub) It may be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[64256,50356,18416,35996,61536,48766,64266,37876],"class_list":["post-304076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-amir-tag-elsir","tag-antibookclub","tag-best-translated-book-award","tag-btba","tag-btba-2016","tag-btba-fiction","tag-french-perfume","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397022,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304076\/revisions\/397022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}