Memory Pandemic, by: Ahmed Al-Dosari

Can a human live without memory? Under the authority of a pandemic that reminds one of the atmosphere of the Portuguese Saramago in his masterpiece "Blindness," people's memories are disrupted, including the heroes of this novel, which Ahmed Al-Dosari inaugurates with a key phrase: "Warning... the blind are blessed... we are all now unconnected." The loss of memory intersects with the attempt of ideology in Arab countries to formulate a policy without a past, and to establish a present on vague identities: from the heart of the "wounded Arabic name," as expressed by the Moroccan thinker Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, the novel raises its difficult questions about existence, politics, and art in a style not devoid of fantasy: "Memories are recruited soldiers, and he is from the infantry, in a city he does not know, or does not recognize him... He asked like a bird fallen from a tree: why does the city not call him if it has not also lost its memory?" Number of pages: 223