REVIEW | A Land Without Jasmine
AUTHOR: WAJDI AL-AHDAL
TRANSLATOR: WILLIAN MAYNARD HUTCHINS
ISBN: 1859643108
FIRST PUBLISHED: JAN 1ST 2012
EDITION RELEASE DATE: SEP 11th 2012
PAGES: 94 PAGES
EDITION LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
I read this book for the From And About Asia Reading Project
For the month of Yemen, July 2022
A Land Without Jasmine is a short magical realism mystery that centered around the disappearance of a female student called Jasmine at Sana'a University, and the conspiracies around her disappearance. This is a thrilling book discussing a girl's coming of age journey in a heavily male-gazed and sexually repressed land.
Arabic cover
The book is multi-POV, but besides Jasmine, all other narrators are male. They are Jasmine's observers, the very people that made her feel threatened and in danger. Each of them has a different impression of Jasmine based on their own interpretations, many related to sexual fantasies. The author wasn’t afraid of criticizing men and their behaviors in this story. Men's voices are full of sexual desires and violence, despite the fact that the women, in this case, Jasmine, cover themselves heavily and also follow strict rules to avoid any contact with men outside of their families.
I found this format suits this book very well for the subject matter, because what tells the reader more about the male gaze than presenting the hot gazings directly on the page? However, this is also a double edge sword because there were so many excessive sexual descriptions that sometimes can be tiring or repetitive.
The gruesome atmosphere is a high light of the story. The depressing vibe chases Jasmine as well as the readers. On top of that, the magical realism elements kicked in later in the book, making it an eerie read.
Sana'a University, where the story is set
However, I was unsatisfied with how the mystery evolved, the twist and turns were surprising but also felt a little lazy. So I wish this book has more development to the core mystery, but it ended abruptly. Moreover, the sexual writings in the book can feel excessive once the book made its point of critiquing the male gaze and sexual repression. The impact of graphic words was diminished in the end.
Overall, this is a solid story to read and it brought up the idea of how society works for women in Yemen with a vivid example of Jasmine's story.
