Chewing gum | Novel

“Gum is a vibrant novel. It is a surreal picture of a society isolated from the world but more vulnerable to the changes of history.” - Hisham Matar While Mukhtar freezes in time, his beloved Fatima disappears in the streets of Tripoli. Through the characters of his novel, writer Mansour Bouchnaf weaves a web of amazing images: a garden full of waste, a charming Italian statue, and a fluffy red shawl. Through these images, which are full of social, historical, and existential meanings, Bouchnaf paints a dark picture of a country in crisis and an isolated person living among warring ideas, all of which are trying to provide their interpretation of the meaning of his life in this world. In its satirical, quasi-journalistic style, Chewing Gum summarizes the existential examination of the issue of living under an oppressive, tyrannical regime. The monotonous movement of the gum continues uninterrupted as man, time and earth turn into ruins. No one can escape the critical eye of the writer who witnessed the brutality of the Gaddafi regime. Chewing Gum is a funny and tearful novel at the same time, which presents university professors, politicians and businessmen in Libya as characters who claim to own the truth of the country but who ultimately fail people.