Translated by Mona Zaki, Ph.D. 2015
Translation of: Serab alelyel.. al{\textquoteright}elekh.
{\textquotedblleft}Students! Write this down in your notebooks! Chewing is infinite!{\textquotedblright}
Young Mukhtar is frozen in time, gazing at his beloved Fatma as she disappears into the streets of Tripoli, Libya, destined to a life of prostitution. Around these young lovers, Bushnaf weaves a compelling network of images: a litter-strewn park, a bewitching Italian statue and a fluttering red scarf. Through these images, imbued with social, historical and existential import, Bushnaf paints a dark portrait of a country in crisis and an individual, alone at the centre of conflicting ideologies, all attempting to explain his existence away.
With its satirical and semi-journalistic style,\ Chewing Gum\ is an existential quest to understand how a society exists beneath a repressive dictatorship. The rhythmic act of chewing relentlessly continues as individuals, time and land turn to waste. In this debut novel, no one escapes the critical gaze of a writer who witnessed first-hand the brutality of Gaddafi{\textquoteright}s regime. At times downright funny and at times poignantly sad, Chewing Gum depicts the academics, politicians and businessmen of Libya who all claim a monopoly on the truth of the country but who all, inevitably, fail the individual.
Mansour Bushnaf is a playwright, novelist and essayist born in Libya 1954. He was imprisoned for ten years in the early 1970{\textquoteright}s because of his political activism and critical writings and is renowned for his award-winning satirical plays. He lives and works in Tripoli.
}, year = {2014}, publisher = {Darf}, address = {London}, isbn = {9781850772729}, }