Sherazade. Leila Sebbar

where the friendly librarian ordered shelvesful of books by Algerian writers. It is in the library of the Pompidou Centre at Beaubourg, where she continues her reading, that she attracts the attention of Julien, himself a dedicated Arabist. He introduces Shérazade to more works about Algeria and also Orientalist paintings, of which he is a collector. In the final resort it is the strange attraction of Matisse's Odalisque in Red Trousers which decides her to leave Julien and her mates and set out for Algeria.

      Many of the characters in this work are obsessive: Krim, with his passion for motorbikes (particularly the powerful Japanese models which his English counterparts affectionately call 'Yammies' and 'Kwakkers'); Pierrot, the hardline militant, with his revolutionary fervour; Sherazade, fascinated by everything Algerian; Julien, with his twin passions for Orientalist paintings and the cinema. It is no gratuitous detail that one of Julien's favourite films is Jean-Luc Godard's illusive, unclassifiable Pierrot le fou, made in 1965, from the novel Obsession by Lionel White, two years after Godard had actually appeared himself in Gaspard-Huit's film Shéhérazade! The fragmented narrative with its sense of immediacy, the early Parisian scenes, the cinéma vérité technique, some of the episodes and the frequent references to paintings in Godard's Pierrot le fou (Renoir, Velasquez) are mirrored in Sebbar's novel. In the film, a respectable young writer, living a sheltered uneventful life, is fascinated by an enigmatic girl and flees with her from Paris. Godard's Pierrot is paralleled by the two men in love with Shérazade: the writer and scholar Julien, and the revolutionary Pierrot. Godard's Pierrot amuses himself driving his car into the sea, and finally kills himself by tying dynamite round his head, lighting the fuse and blowing his head off; Sebbar's Pierrot takes up Shérazade's challenge to drive the car into the Loire. Unbeknown to her it is loaded with smuggled arms. He crashes it and dies in the explosion. Shérazade is unharmed and disappears before the police arrive on the scene. Sebbar takes up her story in Les Carnets de Shérazade (Shérazade's Notebooks, 1985) and La Fou de Shérazade, 1990. Neither is as yet translated into English.

      Dorothy S. Blair