The Proof of the Honey
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A bestseller throughout the Arab world, this novel about female pleasure and personal liberty “unwinds sinuously as a veiled dancer” (Booklist).
A Syrian scholar working in Paris is invited to contribute to a conference on the subject of classic erotic literature in Arabic. The invitation provides occasion for her to evoke memories from her own life, to exult in her personal liberty, her lovers, her desires, and to revisit moments of shared intimacy with other women as they discuss life, love, and sexual exploits.
Far more than an erotic novel, The Proof of the Honey is a surprising and illuminating voyage into the history of Arabic literature. Borrowing inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights, it weaves erudite asides into the fabric of the protagonist’s story and the stories of her lovers. This is a stirring novel about the place afforded sex in modern Arabic society and its relationship to a long, rich tradition, from “the most audacious among contemporary Arab novelists” (Al Jazeera).
“Delivers sensationally beautiful erotic moments, revealing a skillful, enticing voice.” —Publishers Weekly
“Riveting . . . blends folktales, memories of her youth, and gleanings from ancient erotica.” —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An Arab-French writer explores in sensuous hindsight the life-changing nature of a passionate affair. Al Neimi's first-person narrator, a scholar of Arab literature, works as a university librarian in Paris, where her discovery of erotic Arabic texts rekindles the memory of an explosive earlier affair with a man she calls the Thinker. The narrator delights in her secret textual discoveries ("Arabic, for me, is the language of sex," she writes), which underscore the repression of women, on the one hand, while celebrating the healthful, God-given nature of coition, on the other. Parallel to her research, she prods her female friends for tales of sexual exploits and muses on her own upbringing, when the silence and ignorance surrounding sex fueled her desire for greater knowledge. Despite the novel's somewhat disorienting structure, the narrator's description of her sexual awakening with the Thinker delivers sensationally beautiful erotic moments, revealing a skillful, enticing voice from the Arab world.
