Early Persian Painting: Kalila wa Dimna Manuscripts of the Late 14th Century, by Bernard O'Kane. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. 336 pages, illustrations, appendices, index. US$75.00 (Cloth) ISBN 1-86064-852-5

Abstract

rural, Algerian traditionalism as well as a model for rural women's rebellion. The loss of the mother introduces Yasminc into a literate world that might have been closed off to her otherwise. That world of language comes at a price; she loses her link to the maternal and feminine and is unable to speak the language of women and tradition. Liberation ironically results in alienation and exile. In the novel's suspenseful conclusion, Yasmine finally comes into her own voice as she sings a lament on behalf of her lost mother. Yasmine insists upon the nomadic life, wears men's clothing, and writes stories and memoirs. Literate, rebellious, and of mixed racial origin, she is no ordinary figuration of the feminine, but instead a contradictory interstitial form that embodies the dialectic resolution of the violent past with a tentative hopefulness for the future. It is in mediating the internal conflicts between black Africa and Arab, and male and female, the novel seems to suggest, that Algeria will emerge as its own agent, speaking with a distinct voice. The implications of the novel's argument concerning gender and liberation are unclear. El-Majnoun states that: "If I wanted to start a mass uprising, it would rather be to women that I'd turn" (p. 77). The novel holds Yasmine up as its figure of agency and hope, and yet the politicized consciousness of Yasminc is enabled by sexual violence against the mother. The novel draws connections between violence towards (black African) women and agency and liberation that may be read politically, as a commentary on the victimization of women and racial minorities during nationalist liberation movements or psychoanalytically as the precondition for a uniquely "feminine language." The novel's most disappointing moments are a result of the writer's expository writing style that deploys awkward metaphors. For example, locusts find their way into the title of the novel and clearly function as a crucial metaphor for destruction and rebirth in Mahmoud's story, but they are nearly absent from Yasmine's story, making the metaphor seem inconsequential. Century oflocusts will be a welcome addition to literature or cultural history courses. The novel is pedagogically useful for it probes the often-neglected intersection of race and gender during Algeria's colonial era. Julie Hakim Azzam University of Pittsburgh