Bahrain - QuixotiQ by Ali Al Saeed
Well, it was bound to happen, this week I ran across my first dud. This week I read Ali Al Saeed’s QuixotiQ which was the only Bahraini book that I could find in English. Several other literary travelers I discovered online chose QuixotiQ as their book for Bahrain. I was hoping to find something different to read, but, unfortunately, it seems there is not much Bahraini work in translation at this time. An unexpected side effect of this quest is that I have become aware of just how much literature never reaches the United States and, as a byproduct, I have become a big supporter of the efforts to get more works translated.
QuixotiQ follows two young men and a young woman who all like in a town called Okay. The three are all down on their luck with troubled pasts that they are trying to make sense of. As the story unfolds, the three fall even further until the story comes to an anticlimactic climax where nothing really happens and nothing is really resolved.
This was a tough read. I understand that English is Saeed’s second language, but there are some phrases in the book that jolt the reader out of the narrative. I was particularly tickled with the un-ironic description of an event as a “shenanigan.” I really don’t enjoy giving a negative review. I’m sure Saeed worked very hard on this story and writing a novel in a second language is an impressive feat. That being said, I can’t say that I recommend QuixotiQ nor would I seek out anything else by Saeed unless I knew it was writing in his native tongue and translated.
Positive or negative, that is another country down! This coming week, I’ll be diving into A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam of Bangladesh