Coulis
Publisher: Atlas Contact
Cou-lis (the; m; plural: coulis)
1 A semi-liquid puree of fruit or vegetables.
2 An imperative of the verb “to eat” in the Arabic language.
3 Stem of the word “coulisse”: a movable side piece of stage scenery.
Algeria. The casbah, 2019. Amin is a controversial theater director. After a misstep, he is banned from the theater for good. He finds refuge in his mother’s kitchen. With the help of a nomad with cannibalistic daydreams and a problem teenager sent from the Netherlands, he decides to cater a wedding as a cover for his latest grand creation. It looks like a random attempt to return to society, but the wildfire of ambition is all-consuming. Bilal Al Mashta pours his homesickness onto paper in a multifaceted debut about coming home and freedom, written in a language that reverberates Algeria’s fascinating culture. With great humor and bravado, he merges three story lines into an extraordinarily rich and entertaining novel that reads like a true spectacle.
Praise:
‘Al Mashta is a generous storyteller, who obviously takes pleasure in combining human stories and a clever construction, in language brimming with ambiguities, humour and fine inventions. Al Mashta nor his protagonist conform to expectations: it is the free artist who ultimately wins out over the migration background in the novel. In his personal stories, Al Mashta always strikes the right, individual tone, showing a remarkable (linguistic) sensitivity that suggests that this debut novel is not the only story he has to tell.’ – NRC
‘Tasty debut (…) Coulis is an original novel, written with humour and taste.’ – JAN
