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.