Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2021
112 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Two women on a journey through the land of their fathers and mothers. A wrong turn. A bad decision.
They had no idea, when they arrived in Morocco, that their usual freedoms as young European women would not be available. So, when the spry Saleh presents himself as their guide and savior, they embrace his offer. He extracts them from a tight space, only to lead them inexorably into an even tighter one: and from this far darker space there is no exit.
Their tale of confinement and escape is as old as the landscapes and cultures so vividly depicted in this story of where Europe and Africa come closest to meeting, even if they never quite touch.
Longlisted for the Booker International.
"Fluidly translated from Dutch and brilliantly paced, this slim novel delivers a high-voltage adrenaline rush while expertly weaving in commentary about displaced world citizens...A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"While the underdeveloped Murat functions primarily as a political symbol, the women's ill-fated journey leads to an emotionally complex and ultimately chilling transformation. Wieringa hits the mark with this intelligent outing." - Publishers Weekly
"The sentences are concise, propelling the action along and keeping readers on the edge of their seats…a vital must-read." - Asymptote
"A savagely effective little novel…A nasty masterpiece of narrative tension; it's brutally spare." - Evening Standard (UK)
"The gifted Dutch writer Tommy Wieringa is a bold, intelligent stylist, unafraid of exposing the ugliness of society juxtaposed with the vagaries of human nature. [A] taut, intense contemporary thriller of multiple exploitations…The full mercilessness of the migrant dilemma is confronted here to devastating effect." - The Observer (UK)
"A powerful and moving tale. It confronts the horror and cruelty of the migrant dilemma with understated but stark honesty." - Daily Post (UK)
This information about The Death of Murat Idrissi was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in the Netherlands, and partly in the tropics. He began his writing career with travel stories and journalism, and is the author of several internationally bestselling novels. His fiction has been longlisted for the Booker International Prize, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Oxford/Weidenfeld Prize, and has won Holland's Libris Literature Prize.
Sam Garrett has translated some fifty novels and works of nonfiction. He has won prizes and appeared on shortlists for some of the world's most prestigious literary awards, and is the only translator to have twice won the British Society of Authors' Vondel Prize for Dutch–English translation.
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