SOURCE: Buss, Robin. “Between the Two.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4550 (15 June 1990): 654.

In the following review, Buss lauds the lyrical examination of Muslim gender relations in The Sacred Night.

La Nuit sacrée, which was reviewed in the TLS of January 27, 1989, shares its narrator Zohra (also known as Ahmed) with Tahar Ben Jelloun's previous novel, The Sand Child. The eighth daughter of a father who decides to bring her up as the son whom fate has denied him, the Sand Child is both imprisoned and liberated by the rejection of reality. It enables her to move with equal status between the otherwise closed worlds of women and men. Though this suggests a number of allegorical interpretations, the surface of the narrative proceeds with enough sheer pleasure and lack of pretension to deeper meanings to ensure that these are rarely overt. “There is no greatness or tragedy in my story...