The shadows of the Saqifa

Author's name: Maher Abdul Rahman Publisher: Maskelliani for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2024 Literary classification: Novel Brief about the book: An overlooked man stands alone in front of his father, Mukhtar bin Malik Al-Madouni, who has become a corpse after a long, exhausting life. The father's absence envelops him, and the son begins to extract his father from the absence and to gather his news, stories, adventures, and crimes that have been told on tongues. Multiple voices in the novel form a biography of five generations of the family, along with a biography of modern Tunisia, with its plots, conspiracies, injustice, tyranny, and oppression. It possesses enough strangeness to draw us into the story from its first scene to the end. "Shadows of the Saqifa" is a narrative painting of our story as Tunisians, telling us skillfully but at the same time digging deep into questions of politics, power, and society: what does power do to us until we turn into savage, unjust beings? And what are the limits of what a human can commit for the comfortable throne? If power is willing to crush anyone in its way mercilessly, does the power of the story not restore the spirit to everyone who is crushed? Isn't art the greatest witness and the remaining proof of guilt before every tyrannical authority, even if it is shrouded in death?