QuixotiQ

#518
Title: QuixotiQ
Author: Ali Al Saeed
Publisher: iUniverse
Year: 2004
Country: Bahrain
192 pages

Why is the last Q capitalized? We don't learn the answer to this rather obvious question in this first Bahraini novel published in English. That it has won awards speaks to the importance of this publication, but not its quality. There may be something of Bahrain in the themes or tone of the story, but I don't have a way to evaluate it. It seems to take place in the U.S., England, or somewhere similar. The events and plot seem to intend to convey that we cannot escape our (frightening, horrific, intertwined) destinies, but that why things should happen to us, in particular, is random or chaotic. This is the best sense I can make of the novel, which reads like a good second draft in a college fiction writing class. There is something there, but the powerful and genuine aspect of the novel has not yet emerged. The English itself is intermediate EFL level with sudden changes of tense within sentences, misused words, infelicities of grammar, and technically correct but awkward constructions.

I applaud the effort. I may read the only other book I could find by a Bahraini, though I thought when I bought it that he was Qatari: A Line in the Sea: The Qatar v. Bahrain Border Dispute in the World Court--Oh yes, be still, my heart.