Taleb Alrefai – författare

Yacoub, a Kuwaiti man in his sixties, devotes all his time to managing his many successful businesses. His wife, frustrated by the deteriorating situation of their marriage, fills the void in her existence with unbridled consumption. But the luxury in which their family bathes cannot hide the echoes of a terrible absence, that of Ahmad, the youngest son, who has turned his back on his family to join a jihadist organization in Syria. When Yacoub discovers an attraction - as irremediable as it is unexpected - for one of his employees, a young woman of Iranian origin, he almost loses his footing. Caught between worry for the fate of his son and the exaltation that this budding relationship gives him, he suddenly learns that Ahmad is being held hostage by a rival terrorist group who is demanding a colossal ransom. This captivating and suspenseful novel - a true immersion in the daily life of an ultra-rich Kuwaiti family - questions desire, painful family dynamics, and the preoccupations with jihadism. Through the doubts of this patriarchal figure brought to review his life and his choices through the prism of unforeseen upheavals, it is the picture of a very current society that the author paints, in which generations and visions of the world are opposed.

Taleb Alrefai turns a spotlight on Kuwait’s pearl-fishing history in this enthralling fictional re-telling of that fateful day, 19 February 1979, when the country’s famous dhow shipmaster Captain Al-Najdi is lost at sea in a treacherous storm. In between fishing for seabream with two friends, the retired mariner looks back on how the sea has been calling him since childhood, on the punishing work of pearl-divers, and how he became a captain at 14. As he recalls his voyages around the Arabian Peninsula, some with renowned Australian sailor Alan Villiers, he meditates on how the sea was abandoned when pearl-fishing ended with the discovery of synthetic pearls and oil. In a kind of revenge, howling winds and enormous black waves suddenly erupt and quickly engulf the small fishing boat.

Impoverished Egyptian teacher Helmy is deperate to find a better life for himself, his wife and little boy, seeing no future at home in Cairo. He dreams of working in oil-rich Kuwait and its boom in construction being the answer, just like many thousands before him. He manages to borrow the huge cost of a visa and is at last on his way to Kuwait City. He has no idea of the nightmare, instead of the dream, that awaits him – the relentless summer sun with temperatures of 56ºC and more, the choking dust and sweat, having to do construction work instead of teaching. And always, no money, and no answers from the many managers Helmy comes up against. Instead of achieving his dream, he falls into trap after trap. The author is himself a character in the novel, an engineer with the construction company who is writing a story about the humiliating and degrading experiences of the migrant foreign workers arriving in Kuwait to make their fortunes.