SOURCE: Hibbard, Allen. Review of Corruption, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. Review of Contemporary Fiction 16, no. 1 (spring 1996): 156-57.

In the following review, Hibbard lauds the moral “shaping impulses” of Corruption, asserting that Ben Jelloun's text reveals the “endemic” social corruption in certain Arab countries.

Readers of Tahar Ben Jelloun's earlier novels, especially The Sand Child (L'Enfant de sable) and With Downcast Eyes (Les Yeux baissés), will already be acquainted with the magical, lyric style of this Moroccan writer. No Arab male writer presents issues pertaining to gender, exile, and traditional Arab society with so much grace, precision, and wit. His talents have been widely recognized. In 1987 he won the Prix de Goncourt for The Sacred Night (La Nuit sacrée); in 1994 he won the Prix Maghreb.

Corruption (L'Homme rompu in the original French) is more solidly grounded in realism than previous work. Ben Jelloun tackles head-on one of...