International Booker Prize finalist and "one of the Arab world's most innovative novelists" (Roger Allen) delivers a brilliant retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa

The year is 693 and a tense exchange, mediated by an interpreter, takes place between Berber warrior queen al-Kahina and an emissary from the Umayyad General Hassan ibn Nu'man. Her predecessor had been captured and killed by the Umayyad forces some years earlier, but she will go on to defeat them.

The Night Will Have Its Say is a retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the seventh century CE, narrated from the perspective of the conquered peoples. Written in Ibrahim al-Koni's unique and enchanting voice, his lyrical and deeply poetic prose speaks to themes that are intensely timely. Through the wars and conflicts of this distant, turbulent era, he addresses the futility of war, the privilege of an elite few at the expense of the many, the destruction of natural habitats and indigenous cultures, and questions about literal and fundamentalist interpretations of religious texts.

Al-Koni's masterly account of conquest and resistance is both timeless and timely, infused with a sense of disaster and exile-from language, the desert, and homeland.

International Booker Prize finalist and "one of the Arab world's most innovative novelists" (Roger Allen) delivers a brilliant retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the Middle Ages

About the Author

Ibrahim al-Koni was born in the northwest of the Sahara Desert in Libya in 1948 and learned to read and write Arabic at the age of twelve. He has been hailed a magical realist, a Sufi fabulist, and a poetic novelist, and his more than eighty books contain mythological elements, spiritual quests, and existential questions. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages and include Gold Dust, The Animist, The New Oasis, The Puppet, and many more. Among the many literary prizes to his name, he has been awarded the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. He currently lives in Spain.

Nancy Roberts is an award-winning translator of a number of Arabic novels including Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour, for which she received a commendation in the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Translation, and Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses, The Lanterns of the King of Galilee, and Gaza Weddings, for which she was awarded the 2018 Sheikh Hamad Prize for Translation and International Understanding. She lives in Wheaton, Illinois.

Reviews

"I loved The Night Will Have Its Say. Ibrahim al-Koni weaves a magical tale of a world where female power and the polyphony of the feminine are a given, where the earth and the heavens are in constant dialogue, and where ancestors and scriptures are alive and present."-Nadia Wassef, author of Shelf Life

"A rich text. . . with gripping scenes and confrontations, and some fascinating underlying conflicts, in particular concerning attitudes towards life, freedom, and conquest . . . . an unusual kind of historical fiction, but certainly worthwhile."-The Complete Review

"[W]estern readers will be rewarded with insights into the rise of Islam and some lesser-known but important leaders . . . [and] find triggers here that cause one to examine, at least for a while, eternal questions about who we are and where we fit in the larger tides of life." -Historical Novels Review

"One of the most acclaimed writers in the Arabic world . . . his most recent novel, The Night Will Have Its Say . . . placed during the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the seventh century CE, written from the perspective of the conquered, he once again returns to the desert that has remained his spiritual home."-AramcoWorld

PRAISE FOR IBRAHIM AL-KONI

"A magnificent novelist"-Marilyn Booth, translator of the International Booker Prize winner, Celestial Bodies

"One of the Arab world's most innovative novelists"-Roger Allen, University of Pennsylvania

"The desert setting is al-Koni's strength: its expanse, desolation, and mystery are powerfully evoked."-Banipal

"Al-Koni's story, simply and elegantly told, has all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy--or, better, all the tribulations of Job."-Kirkus Reviews

"Al-Koni's novels are aesthetic renderings of the passions of the desert and of the rich legends and cosmology of his people. An encyclopedic writer who has digested mythologies of the ancient world and literature of the modern world, al-Koni has both a poetic bent and a mystical inclination."-Al Ahram Weekly

"A true journey into the human psyche"-Cairo Magazine

"Imagine Cormac McCarthy's savage lyricism in a Paul Bowles desert landscape and you begin to enter the bleakly beautiful world of this mesmerizing, fable-like novel."-The Independent

Book Information
ISBN 9781649031860
Author Ibrahim al-Koni
Format Paperback
Page Count 278
Imprint Hoopoe
Publisher American University in Cairo Press