Hassouna Mosbahi – författare

Originally published in 2020, Hassouna Mosbahi’s riveting novel explores the human psyche amidst the turbulent aftermath of the Arab Spring in Tunisia. Through the experiences of three friends, Mosbahi narrates the profound impact of violence and cultural change in Tunisian society and the ways in which those shifts are reflected in their personal lives. We meet Saleem, on the brink of turning fifty, whose once blissful marriage teeters on the edge as his mental health deteriorates. Aziz, a retired postal clerk with an unassuming appearance, finds solace in literature and international cinema. And Omran, a well-traveled writer and public intellectual, navigates a complex relationship with a young Franco-Tunisian woman who lives in Paris. As these men forge an unlikely friendship over drinks at a coastal bar in Bizerte, and through long walks along the beach, they grapple with the increasing political extremism that surrounds them. Repelled by the Jihadist rhetoric and the brand of masculinity it represents, the three friends question their relationship to their country, which is both their home and a place they feel alienated from. We Never Swim in the Same River Twice offers an alternative narrative of the Arab Spring, one that challenges Western media’s depiction of a "blessed revolution," and gives readers an intimate and elegiac portrait of Tunisian history.

In Hassouna Mosbahi’s engrossing and keenly observed novel, he takes readers deep into one day in the life of Yunus, a Tunisian intellectual. A professor of French language and Flaubert specialist, Yunis is recently retired and separated from his wife, as he leaves the city to settle in the Tunisian coastal city of Nabeul. Searching for solitude, he hopes to spend the remainder of his life among the books he loves. On the day of his sixtieth birthday, Yunus plunges into a delayed midlife crisis as he reflects on the major moments in his life, from taking up writing as a young man to his career as a university professor to his failed marriage. Yunus’s identity crisis mirrors that of his Tunisian homeland with its tumultuous history of political and cultural upheaval. He meditates on the lives of his friends, drawing from his memory a colorful cast of characters whose experiences reflect the outsized influence of religion and tradition in their lives. Through the eyes of Yunus, Mosbahi’s elegiac, literary novel explores life and death, love and writing, and the relationship between puritanism and extremism in the Arab world today.