Throughout the novella, the reader is forced to wonder: What is real? Who among the hospital’s madmen can be believed? What truly happened and what didn’t? Can the narrator himself be trusted? In the end, the fatalistic storyteller concludes that it doesn’t really matter. But regardless of veracity, what Bouanani’s characters say — and how they say it — does.
— lara vergnaud
Acknowledgments
Lara Vergnaud would like to thank Diane Bensenia, Tynan Kogane, Chris Clarke, Heidi Denman, and Mohammed El Khadiri for their insight and feedback, and Omar Berrada for his continued support and encouragement.
Anna Della Subin would like to thank Touda Bouanani, Omar Berrada, and Ali Essafi for sharing stories of Ahmed; Emma Ramadan, Joshua Richeson, and Robyn Creswell for their translations; the editors of Nejma and Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology; Susan Gilson Miller for her history of Morocco, and Leor Halevi for his scholarship on the angels of death.
Copyright © 1990 by Ahmed Bouanani
Translation copyright © 2018 by Lara Vergnaud
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper
Originally published in French as L’hôpital in 1990
and reissued in 2012 by Éditions Verdier in Paris
and DK Editions in Casablanca
First published as New Directions Paperbook 1411 in 2018
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bouanani, Ahmed author. | Vergnaud, Lara translator.
Title: The hospital : a tale in black and white / by Ahmed Bouanani ; translated by Lara Vergnaud.
Other titles: Hôpital. English
Description: New York : New Directions Publishing, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2018006021 (print) | lccn 2018002150 (ebook) | isbn 9780811225779 (ebook) | isbn 9780811225762 (alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Tuberculosis—Patients—Fiction. | Hospital patients — Morocco — Fiction. | gsafd: Fantasy fiction | Psychological fiction
Classification: lcc pq3989.2.b629 (print) | lcc pq3989.2.b629 h6713 2018 (ebook) | ddc 843/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006021
eISBN: 9780811224895
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
new directions titles available as ebooks
ndbooks.com
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