Wedding by the Sea

Lamarat is a Moroccan boy who is born and raised in Holland. He travels with his parents to Morocco, which is more or less unknown to him, for the wedding of his sister Rebekka with his uncle Mosa. The only problem is that Mosa loves women too much and that he tries to escape his own wedding. Lamarat gets the order to find his uncle (and future brother in law) from his panicked father: the wedding guests who are inside eating the wedding meal while sitting on garden chairs imported from Holland should not know anything about this event. In the end he finds his uncle and nearly returns him in one piece, until fate intervenes...This is Abdelkader Benali's first novel and he certainly shows that he can write. He remains true to his North-African roots and shows that he is a modern storyteller: the story mentioned above forms the backbone of the book but there are numerous digressions describing the way the parents met, their constant longing for Morocco, the house they build that starts to fall apart from the beginning, Lamarat who is a strange in a land that should be his, the double standards with regard to male and female pre-marital sex and the determination of Rebekka.

I was surprised to learn that the North African/Dutch author was so young--wrote this book around the age of only 20. Aside from that, I loved the story: the rambling, lyrical, sometimes hallucinatory oral tale telling style really captivated me. The cultural references are refreshingly messy windows into the world of a culturally mixed hero. So many of us have a wildly mixed family culture. It's a fun read and well-written novel. I am looking forward to his next.