Street of Thieves

Starred review from August 18, 2014
Set against a backdrop of rising Islamic extremism, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement, Énard’s (Zone) latest novel is a howling elegy for thwarted youth. The narrator, a young Moroccan called Lakhdar, spends his time in Tangier ogling girls with his friend Bassam and reading French detective novels. After he is caught naked with his cousin Meryem, his father disowns him. Enter Sheikh Nureddin, who offers Lakhdar a job as a bookseller for the Muslim Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought, whose under-the-table titles include pamphlets by Sayyid Qutb (an Egyptian writer and leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and ’60s who was executed in 1966 for plotting the assassination of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser), pointing to the group’s nefarious aims. Unlike Bassam, who becomes radicalized by the group, Lakhdar spurns violence and finds escape in books. For Lakhdar, there are two Tangiers—the one referenced by expat authors like Paul Bowles, and the one he himself inhabits; the latter is dismissed by Lakhdar as a simple “homophonic mistake.” Énard’s relentless, incisive prose underscores his thesis that “men are dogs” incapable of determining their fate in the face of the political systems that control them.

September 15, 2014
A coming-of-age story that plays out across a contemporary landscape of the Arab Spring and other social uprisings. Lakhdar, the narrator, begins his story in Tangier, in his native Morocco. He's obsessed with girls, especially with his cousin Meryem. When he's caught in a compromising position with her, his father beats him, and his family essentially disavows him. Lakhdar begins to work as a bookseller with the Muslim Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought, becoming closer to his friend Bassam and to the group's leader, Sheikh Nureddin. This job provides little nourishment for Lakhdar's restless spirit, however, and neither does a move to a job as a typist with a French businessman. Eventually Lakhdar links up with Judit, a Spanish student studying Arabic in Tangier. We learn that restlessness is not simply personal, but also cultural when violence breaks out in Tangier and Marrakesh. For several months Lakhdar works on the Ibn Battuta, a ferryboat plying the waters between Morocco and Algeciras. Ultimately, he makes his way to Barcelona (where he lives on the eponymous Street of Thieves) to seek out Judit, with whom he'd stayed in desultory contact since she left Tangier, though Lakhdar suspects her passion has cooled. They do get back together, and Judit even helps him get a job tutoring students in Arabic, though their relationship is colored by the discovery that Judit has a tumor. When Sheik Nureddin reappears with Bassam on a business trip to Barcelona, Lakhdar notices how serious and committed his old friend has become-and his worry eventually leads to tragedy. Enard writes passionately about Lakhdar's movement from innocence to experience, and the novel's various settings all ring depressingly true.

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