The book is the first edited collection in English on Moroccan author Abdellah Taïa and frames the distinctiveness of his migration by considering current scholarship in French and Francophone studies, post-colonial studies, affect theory, queer theory, and language and sexuality.

In this first edited collection in English on Abdellah Taïa, Denis M. Provencher and Siham Bouamer frame the distinctiveness of the Moroccan author’s migration by considering current scholarship in French and Francophone studies, post-colonial studies, affect theory, queer theory, and language and sexuality. In contrast to critics that consider Taïa to immigrate and integrate successfully to France as a writer and intellectual, Provencher and Bouamer argue that the author’s writing is replete with elements of constant migration, “comings and goings,” cruel optimism, flexible accumulation of language over borders, transnational filiations, and new forms of belonging and memory making across time and space. At the same time, his constantly evolving identity emerges in many non-places, defined as liminal and border narrative spaces where unexpected and transgressive new forms of belonging emerge without completely shedding shame, mourning, or melancholy.

Introduction: Reconsidering Abdellah Taïa’s Queer Migration

Denis M. Provencher and Siham Bouamer

Part One: On Place and Non-Place

1“Sortir de tous les territoires”: To Be a Racialized and Colonized Subject within France Today. Is There for Abdellah Taïa a There Where to Go and to Exist?

Ralph Heyndels

2Sexual Fluidity and Movements in Abdellah Taïa’s L’armée du salut: The Birth of a Queer Moroccan Francophone Identity
Olivier Le Blond

3Marginal Masculinities: Disidentifying Sexual Performativity Across Abdellah Taïa’s Novels

Daniel Maroun

Part Two: Affective Migration

4He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: Cruel Optimism in Abdellah Taïa’s L’armée du salut

Siham Bouamer

5Queerness, Shame, and the Family in Abdellah Taïa’s Epistolary Writing

Ryan K. Schroth

6Mourning and Reconciliation: Anger, Politics, and Love

Jean-Pierre Boulé

Part Three: Postcolonial Temporalities

7Abdellah Taïa’s Melancholic Migration: Oscillation between Solitude and Multitude

Thomas Muzart

8From the “Garçon du bled” to Tintin’s Dog: The Interplay between Race and Sex in Abdellah Taïa’s Un pays pour mourir and Celui qui est digne d’être aimé

Philippe Panizzon

9Adbellah Taïa’s Transflilial Myth Making and Unfaithful Realms of Memory

Denis M. Provencher

Part Four: New Directions and Conclusions

10The Voices of Reappropriation

Antoine Idier

11Des hommes fatigués

Abdellah Taïa

12 Tired Men

Abdellah Taïa translated by Denis M. Provencher

Conclusion: New Directions for Abdellah Taïa and the Field

Denis M. Provencher and Siham Bouamer