The End of the Sahara 9781916725225 Paperback

On an early autumn morning in 1988, on the outskirts of an unnamed Algerian city, a local shepherd stumbles across the dead body of Zakia Zaghouani, a beautiful nightclub singer who ran away from her hometown and family, seeking a brighter future.Incompetent and corrupt Inspector Hamid is perhaps the least likely to find the murderer. On their own, none of Khatibis characters can help us see and solve the crime. For that, we need a mosaic of many voices: Noura, the lawyer who represents Zakias fiance; Ibrahim, who runs the VHS rental shop and whose mother is a cleaning lady at the hotel where Zakia worked; Kamal, the front-desk clerk at the hotel; Maimoun, the hotels owner; the Golden Sheikha, a rival singer; Zakias fiance, Bashir; and more. Most of them are searching not just for Zakias killer, but for the stories of other ghosts flitting through their city, the ghosts of abused and murdered women; the ghosts of fathers who died during the countrys war for independence; and the ghosts of Algerias long colonial period