Banquet of Lies

The Banquet of Lies is an unusual coming-of-age story. A young man, Koussaila, recounts the awakening of his unbridled sexuality in the arms of older women. Indeed, in the closed world of suppressed desire in 1960s Algeria, he goes from the arms of his aunt, to the schoolmaster’s wife to those of a nun he meets in a cemetery. Thus, in a climate of mounting political unrest, Koussaila continues on his chaotic path of desire, self-disgust, women and sex, attempting in vain to uproot his innermost self, torn between the world of Islam (in the pages of the Koran) and that of ‘Roumis’ (in the pages of Les Fleurs du Mal and Madame Bovary ). One day, however, he will be forced to choose. War, intolerance and Islamic fanaticism are looming on the horizon.