January Book Club - The Wedding of Zein by Tayeb Salih

If you enjoy reading, then come to our book club!

1. Get yourself a copy of the book (physical or digital either is fine).
2. Read it.
3. Come with your book, any notes/observations/questions you have, and an open mind.

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Zein is the village idiot, and everyone in the village is dumbfounded when the news goes around that he will be getting married—Zein the freak, Zein who burst into laughter the moment he was born and has kept women and children laughing ever since, Zein who lost all his teeth at six and whose face is completely hairless, Zein married at last? Zein’s particular role in the life of the village has been the peculiar one of falling in love again and again with girls who promptly marry another man. It would be unheard of for him to get married himself.

In Tayeb Salih’s wonderfully agile telling, the story of how this miracle came to be is one that engages the tensions that exist in the village, or indeed in any community: tensions between the devout and the profane, the poor and the propertied, the modern and the traditional. In the end, however, Zein’s ridiculous good luck augurs an ultimate reconciliation, opening a prospect of a world made whole.

Introduction by Hisham Matar.
Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies