Full Description
A first-ever English translation of a compelling work by a forerunner of modern Sephardi feminist literature.
Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author's original notes.
Contents
Preface
by Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino
Acknowledgements
Introduction
by Frances Malino
A Note on the Translation
Map of the North of Africa and the Mediterranean (1910)
Mazaltob
by Blanche Bendahan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Mazaltob and the Rise of the Modern Sephardi Novel
by Yaëlle Azagury
Endnotes
Further Reading
