Hassouna Mosbahi, "Truman Capote" (trans. William M. Hutchins) (Tunisia)

It’s December 22. Welcome back to the 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar—a literary globetrotting adventure featuring 25 stories from 25 different countries.

Our editor, Alberto Manguel, is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Here he is on Hassouna Mosbahi’s story, “Truman Capote”:

The literature of Tunisia is rich in two languages at least: the Arabic of North Africa, and the French of its colonial past. Hassouna Mosbahi, gifted translator of modern European classics such as Henri Michaux and Samuel Beckett, brings to his stories figures of Western culture as if they belonged to a strange, actual mythology. Taking Truman Capote’s affirmation literally—“Strange where our passions carry us, floggingly pursue us, forcing upon us unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies”—Mosbahi transforms his home landscape into something like a oneiric world in which desire and reality blend and cannot be distinguished one from the other.

* * * * *

What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2021 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians. And check back tomorrow for commentary on the next story!