Great African Reads discussion

This thread is for discussions of our Nov/Dec 2022 read of For Bread Alone by Mohamed Choukri - Notice that there may be SPOILERS (Find the no-spoiler thread here)
- Feel free to discuss anything you like about the book here: Here's a few questions to get you started:
How did you like the characters? The plot? The style? The portrayal of characters and their surroundings?

I suggested this book because I wrote an article for my university final thesis about it. I analysed hopeness in relation to the three most important theme axis: love, meaningful relationships (loneliness vs friendship) and freedom. I found this reading astonishing, mindblowing, what-the-fuckist. The way in which the author tells everything, with such brutality (e.g. when he admits he sexually abused another boy in first person) and with such sensibility sometimes (the episode in the jail in this sense I think is key). Well, you'll tell me when you finish it. Happy reading!

I read this only now, did not have time last year to join the group discussion...
It is a powerful read and and a very honest and straightforward account of living at the bottom of society.
I agree with you Luisa, that it is a mind-blowing read in that perspective. On the other hand, I didn't really like the linear structure of the book and the lack of transitions between some of the episodes.

I think that "lack of transition" you talk about is more or less the consequence of the act of remembering. I feel like Chukri is navigating this whole mud of trauma and for that reason he has dissociative amnesia of some episodes. I don't know if you agree, but for me, that straightforwardness —and confusion— is an action of honesty —also in the narrative form. He could have made up what happened in the middle of two lucid memories, but he didn't do that.

I also think that, because of that, it does not leave a sense of autofiction. It feels more like an autobiography — I mean, sticking to things that did happen. What do you think?

I think you are right: as if he felt the need to blurt it all out, in one straight line, as he remembered it. Indeed more autobiographic than autofiction.

I just read Jax' comments in the no-spoiler thread (even though it contains some spoilers), arguing that there are too many libidinous details in the book. It is true that his account is full of sex, drugs and alcohol, but that might also have been close to the truth.