A Rentrée Novel on Race, Denial and the Nights That Absorb It
In L'Arabe du samedi soir, Selim Derkaoui writes about the racism that wears down young Black and Arab men, and the drunken nights that become one of the few spaces left to let it out.
The literary review En attendant Nadeau has published a piece on L'Arabe du samedi soir, a novel by Selim Derkaoui appearing in this year's rentrée littéraire. According to the outlet, the book tells a story of denial and blindness — the denial of racism itself, and the blindness of a society that fails to see how it wears down the bodies of young Black and Arab men.
En attendant Nadeau describes the novel as handling this material with considerable sensitivity, focusing on the narrow spaces left open to its characters to let off steam: drunkenness and the night. The review's title, borrowed by the outlet itself, plays on the double meaning of an Arab man who drinks — a figure the novel apparently uses to expose the contradictions of how racialized identity gets policed even in moments of release.
No further detail on plot, publisher or length is available from the source. The review itself is the only account of the book the desk has seen.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
