Böcker av Salah El Moncef

As its title suggests, Now & Then is an urgent plea to revisit the present in relation to the past-to bear in mind the admonition that "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (William Faulkner). Lurking behind the warning is a ponderous question that haunts this collection of stories and essays: Are we going to have to relive it all over again-the era of racial, ethnic, and national tensions that made the 1930s such a terrifying decade in the history of western societies? In two stories and two essays, Salah el Moncef conjures up a set of fearful symmetries between the flimsy diversity and globalism of "Now," and the authoritarian, martial echoes of "Then," a world long consigned to the ash heap of history-or so we think. Moncef's collection of stories and essays is a timely reminder that Now and Then are frightfully similar-a warning we would do well to heed.

Benghazi is an odyssey into the mental universe of Mariam Khaldoon, a Libyan teenager confronted with a life-changing emotional crisis. The story is centered around the power exerted over Mariam by two powerful men: her father, and the Fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini. Between the omnipotent family patriarch who makes an unjust decision that throws her existence into turmoil, and the heartless Italian tyrant ruling over Libya with an iron fist, the highly gifted and insightful adolescent must forge a path for herself and find a way to overcome the trauma inflicted upon her by a harsh social milieu and an aloof father.