Title: The Last Friend - Tahar Ben Jelloun - book
Summary :
It is in Tangier, an international, cosmopolitan, and strange city, towards the end of the 1950s. Two teenagers, Mamed and Ali, meet at the French high school; they hang out and become friends. Spanning some thirty years, their relationship will be woven with misunderstandings, hardships endured together, but also silent jealousy and betrayal. This incandescent friendship resembles a love story gone wrong. In this novel, however, each of the characters takes turns giving their version of things. We see that they have not lived the same story. The naiveté of one is matched by a perverse and destructive selfishness of the other. Could friendship itself be a misunderstanding? This novel, written in a direct and clear language, is also a cruel portrait of Morocco during the years of repression and the disillusionment that followed. Beyond this human and political landscape, and right up to the final twist, The Last Friend reveals a complex and contradictory society, both archaic and modern. Even when one leaves Morocco, one returns there to die.
