Sidewalks and walls

The novel "Sidewalks and Walls" by Mohamed Zefzaf came to carry within its folds the existential nihilistic stance towards the world, through "Bou Mahdi," the university student studying philosophy. He is influenced by Sartre's existential philosophy, and the narrator adopts an existential philosophical framework to depict the events of the novel and as an intellectual space for the dialogue it presents, where the novel declares a stance on women, books, student disturbances, and life itself. "Sometimes the world seems to me to be dilapidated, very dilapidated..." and the hero's hatred of the world extends even to his mother. "I hate her and even hate the house that gathers me and her. I don't like her, I don't know why." The work also expresses, through its hero Bou Mahdi, ideas of absurdity, the foolishness of life, and its futility. "He launched like a yellow leaf pushed by the wind." Many critics considered that the alienation of the character in this work, embodied by the narrator through Bou Mahdi, has no roots in the Moroccan reality, given the vast gap in thought, civilization, and culture between Moroccan society and Western society.