Popular Tunisia Books

15+ [Hand Picked] Popular Books On Tunisia

4.6/5

The Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi , Edouard Roditi (Translator)

Originally published in 1953 (in English in 1955), The Pillar of Salt the semi-autobiographical novel about a young boy growing up in French colonized Tunisia. To gain access to privileged French society, he must reject his many identities – Jew, Arab, and African. But, on the eve of World War II, he is forced to come to terms with his loyalties and his past.

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3.8/5

The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs by Andrew Hussey

A provocative rethinking of France's long relationship with the Arab world To fully understand both the social and political pressures wracking contemporary France—and, indeed, all of Europe—as well as major events from the Arab Spring in the Middle East to the tensions in Mali, Andrew Hussey believes that we have to look beyond the confines of domestic horizons. As much as A provocative rethinking of France's long relationship with the Arab world To fully understand both the social and political pressures wracking contemporary France—and, indeed, all of Europe—as well as major events from the Arab Spring in the Middle East to the tensions in Mali, Andrew Hussey believes that we have to look beyond the confines of domestic horizons. As much as unemployment, economic stagnation, and social deprivation exacerbate the ongoing turmoil in the banlieues, the root of the problem lies elsewhere: in the continuing fallout from Europe's colonial era. Combining a fascinating and compulsively readable mix of history, literature, and politics with his years of personal experience visiting the banlieues and countries across the Arab world, especially Algeria, Hussey attempts to make sense of the present situation. In the course of teasing out the myriad interconnections between past and present in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Beirut, and Western Europe, The French Intifada shows that the defining conflict of the twenty-first century will not be between Islam and the West but between two dramatically different experiences of the world—the colonizers and the colonized.

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3.8/5

روائح ماري كلير by الحبيب السالمي , Habib Selmi

رواية تتابع تطوُّر قصة عاطفية في كلّ مراحلتها: منذ لحظة تبادل النظرات الأولى، وصولاً إلى الانفصال، مروراً بما يحكم العلاقة بين رجل وامرأة من غموض وتعقيدات وإرباكات تَفْضح هشاشة هذه العلاقة وسرعة عطبها. لحظة بلحظة، تلتقط التفاصيل الصغيرة التي تَصْنع، بتراكمها، العيش اليوميّْ بكلّ أصالته وحقيقته: من الفطور الصباحي والعادات الشخصية المبتذلة، حتى رغبات الجسد وغرائزه وانفعالاته رواية تتابع تطوُّر قصة عاطفية في كلّ مراحلتها: منذ لحظة تبادل النظرات الأولى، وصولاً إلى الانفصال، مروراً بما يحكم العلاقة بين رجل وامرأة من غموض وتعقيدات وإرباكات تَفْضح هشاشة هذه العلاقة وسرعة عطبها. لحظة بلحظة، تلتقط التفاصيل الصغيرة التي تَصْنع، بتراكمها، العيش اليوميّْ بكلّ أصالته وحقيقته: من الفطور الصباحي والعادات الشخصية المبتذلة، حتى رغبات الجسد وغرائزه وانفعالاته، تتقابل حضاراتان وتصطدمان

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4.8/5

The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi (Afterword) , Jean-Paul Sartre (Introduction) , Susan Gilson Miller (Afterword)

First published in English in 1965, this timeless classic explores the psychological effects of colonialism on colonized and colonizers alike.

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4.3/5

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles

An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utter An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased. Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles vividly brings to life this lost empire-from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest seapower in the Mediterranean. And at the heart of the history of Carthage lies the extraordinary figure of Hannibal-the scourge of Rome and one of the greatest military leaders, but a man who also unwittingly led his people to catastrophe. The first full-scale history of Carthage in decades, Carthage Must Be Destroyed reintroduces modern readers to the larger-than-life historical players and the ancient glory of this almost forgotten civilization.

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4.1/5

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power. Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel. Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

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4.9/5

The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith

Under the hot desert sun nothing is quite as it seems. Howard Ingham, an American writer, is sent to Tunisia to gather material for a movie, a love story too sordid to be set in America. But his director fails to arrive as scheduled and the erratic mails bring news of infidelities and suicide. Ingham, for reasons obscure even to himself, decides to stay on and work instead Under the hot desert sun nothing is quite as it seems. Howard Ingham, an American writer, is sent to Tunisia to gather material for a movie, a love story too sordid to be set in America. But his director fails to arrive as scheduled and the erratic mails bring news of infidelities and suicide. Ingham, for reasons obscure even to himself, decides to stay on and work instead on a novel. Gradually, however, a series of peculiar events, a hushed-up murder, a vanished corpse, and secret broadcasts to the Soviet Union, lures him inexorably into the deep, ambivalent shadows of this Arab town; into deceit and away from conventional morality. And when Ingham finds an accomplice to murder, or perhaps something more, what is in question is not justice or truth, but the state of his oddly quiet conscience.

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4.9/5

Benny and Omar by Eoin Colfer

Two very different cultures collide in this hilarious book about a young sports fanatic named Benny who is forced to leave his home in Ireland and move with his family to Tunisia. He wonders how he will survive in such an unfamiliar place. Then he teams up with wild and resourceful Omar, and a madcap friendship between the two boys leads to trouble, escapades, a unique way Two very different cultures collide in this hilarious book about a young sports fanatic named Benny who is forced to leave his home in Ireland and move with his family to Tunisia. He wonders how he will survive in such an unfamiliar place. Then he teams up with wild and resourceful Omar, and a madcap friendship between the two boys leads to trouble, escapades, a unique way of communicating, and ultimately, a heartbreaking challenge.

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5/5

Les Prépondérants by Hédi Kaddour

Au printemps 1922, des Américains d’Hollywood viennent tourner un film à Nahbès, une petite ville du Maghreb. Ce choc de modernité avive les conflits entre notables traditionnels, colons français et jeunes nationalistes épris d’indépendance. Raouf, Rania, Kathryn, Neil, Gabrielle, David, Ganthier et d’autres se trouvent alors pris dans les tourbillons d’un univers à plusie Au printemps 1922, des Américains d’Hollywood viennent tourner un film à Nahbès, une petite ville du Maghreb. Ce choc de modernité avive les conflits entre notables traditionnels, colons français et jeunes nationalistes épris d’indépendance. Raouf, Rania, Kathryn, Neil, Gabrielle, David, Ganthier et d’autres se trouvent alors pris dans les tourbillons d’un univers à plusieurs langues, plusieurs cultures, plusieurs pouvoirs. Certains d’entre eux font aussi le voyage vers Paris et Berlin, vers de vieux pays qui recommencent à se déchirer sous leurs yeux. Ils tentent tous d’inventer leur vie, s’adaptent ou se révoltent. Il leur arrive de s’aimer. De la Californie à l’Europe en passant par l’Afrique du Nord, Les Prépondérants nous entraînent dans la grande agitation des années 1920. Les mondes entrent en collision, les êtres s’affrontent, se désirent, se pourchassent, changent. L’écriture alerte et précise d’Hédi Kaddour serre au plus près ces vies et ces destins.

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3.8/5

Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring by Michael J. Willis

The world was stunned when the entrenched regime of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown on January 14, 2011. This massive popular revolt shook the foundations of a small country, and its profound ramifications have echoed throughout the wider Arab world. Many wondered why they had failed to grasp the extent of Tunisia's unrest. They also recognized a general i The world was stunned when the entrenched regime of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown on January 14, 2011. This massive popular revolt shook the foundations of a small country, and its profound ramifications have echoed throughout the wider Arab world. Many wondered why they had failed to grasp the extent of Tunisia's unrest. They also recognized a general ignorance about the parts of the Arab world surrounding Tunisia, particularly the Maghreb region, which attracts only a fraction of the foreign interest largely directed toward Egypt, the Levant, and the Gulf. This book examines the politics of three important players in the central Maghreb -- Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco -- since they gained independence from European colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s. Michael J. Willis maps the political dynamics of the region by focusing on the roles played by multiple actors, including the military, various political parties, and Islamist movements.

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4.6/5

Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb , Jane Kuntz

Talismano is a novelistic exploration of writing seen as a hallucinatory journey through half-remembered, half-imagined cities—in particular, the city of Tunis, both as it is now, and as it once was. Walking and writing, journey and journal, mirror one another to produce a calligraphic, magical work: a palimpsest of various languages and cultures, highlighting Abdelwahab M Talismano is a novelistic exploration of writing seen as a hallucinatory journey through half-remembered, half-imagined cities—in particular, the city of Tunis, both as it is now, and as it once was. Walking and writing, journey and journal, mirror one another to produce a calligraphic, magical work: a palimpsest of various languages and cultures, highlighting Abdelwahab Meddeb’s beguiling mastery of both the Western and Islamic traditions. Meddeb’s journey is first and foremost a sensual one, almost decadent, where the narrator luxuriates in the Tunis of his memories and intercuts these impressions with recollections of other cities at other times, reviving the mythical figures of Arab-Islamic legend that have faded from memory in a rapidly westernizing North Africa. A fever dream situated on the knife-edge between competing cultures, Talismano is a testament to the power of language to evoke, and subdue, experience.

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3.9/5

A Tunisian Tale by Hassouna Mosbahi , Max Weiss (Translator) , حسونة المصباحي

After ne'er-do-wells spread rumors about a widowed mother's weak moral character among the people of a slum on the outskirts of Tunis that festers with migrants who have come to the metropolis from the heartland in search of a better life, her twenty-year-old son takes matters into his own hands and commits an unspeakable crime. An imaginative and disturbing novel told fro After ne'er-do-wells spread rumors about a widowed mother's weak moral character among the people of a slum on the outskirts of Tunis that festers with migrants who have come to the metropolis from the heartland in search of a better life, her twenty-year-old son takes matters into his own hands and commits an unspeakable crime. An imaginative and disturbing novel told from the alternating viewpoints of this unrepentant sociopath, as he sits and fumes on death row but willingly guides us through his juvenile exploits and twisted memories, and his murdered mother, who calmly gives an account of her interrupted life from beyond the grave, A Tunisian Tale introduces the narrative talents of Hassouna Mosbahi to an English-language audience for the first time, as he confronts both taboos of Tunisian society and the boundaries of conventional storytelling.

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3.8/5

Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia and the Peloponnese by Robert D. Kaplan

In Mediterranean Winter, Kaplan, bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts, relives an austere journey he took as a youth thru the off-season Mediterranean. The awnings are rolled up. Other tourists are gone. Cold damp weather takes him back to the 1950s & earlier--a golden, intensely personal age of tourism. Decades ago, He voyaged from N. Africa to Italy, Yugoslavia & In Mediterranean Winter, Kaplan, bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts, relives an austere journey he took as a youth thru the off-season Mediterranean. The awnings are rolled up. Other tourists are gone. Cold damp weather takes him back to the 1950s & earlier--a golden, intensely personal age of tourism. Decades ago, He voyaged from N. Africa to Italy, Yugoslavia & Greece, enjoying the radical freedom of youth, unaccountable to time because there was always time to make up for mistakes. He recalls the journey less to look inward into his own past than to look outward in order to dissect the process of learning thru travel, in which a succession of new landscapes can lead to books & artwork never before encountered. He 1st imagines Tunis as the glow of gypsum lamps shimmering against lime-washed mosques; the city he actually discovers is even more intoxicating. He goes to the ramparts of a Turkish kasbah where Carthaginian, Roman & Byzantine forts once stood: "I could see deep into Algeria over a ribwork of hills so gaunt it seemed the wind had torn the flesh off them." In these surroundings he discovers Augustine; the courtyards of Tunis lead him to the historical writings of Ibn Khaldun. He goes to the 5th-century Greek temple at Segesta & reflects on the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily. At Hadrian's villa, "Shattered domes revealed clouds moving overhead in countless visions of eternity. It was a place made for silence & for contemplation, where you wanted a book handy. Everycorner was a cloister. No view was panoramic: each seemed deliberately composed." His bus, train & nighttime boat rides, his long walks to archeological sites lead him to subjects as varied as the Berber threat to Carthage; the Roman army's hunt for the warlord Jugurtha; the legacy of Byzantine art; the medieval Greek philosopher Georgios Gemistos Plethon, who helped kindle the Italian Renaissance; 20th-century British literary writing about Greece; & the links between Rodin & the Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. Within these pages are smells, tastes & the profundity of chance encounters. Mediterranean Winter begins in Rodin's sculpture garden in Paris, passes thru gritty streets of Marseilles, ends with a moving epiphany about Greece as the world prepares for the 2004 Summer Olympics. Mediterranean Winter is the story of an education, filled with memories & history, not the author's alone, but humanity's as well.

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4.4/5

دار الباشا by حسن نصر , Hassan Nasr

''دار الباشا'' رواية تتحدث عن ''مرتضى'' الطفل الذي يبحث عن حقيقة دار الباشا الذي كان يعيش بها وهو طفل ،حيث يحاول استعادة الحقيقة و الذكريات.

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4.4/5

Sahara by Michael Palin , Basil Pao (Photographer)

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean. This was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert. Shrugging aside the perils of camel stew and being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally, he travels through some of the most specta Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean. This was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert. Shrugging aside the perils of camel stew and being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally, he travels through some of the most spectacular landscapes on earth. For the Sahara is no empty wasteland, but home to a diversity of cultures whose long history stretches from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the oil-rich Islamic republics of today.

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