{"product_id":"the-hospital-9780811225762","title":"The Hospital","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive...\" So begins Ahmed Bouanani's arresting, hallucinatory 1989 novel \u003cem\u003eThe Hospital\u003c\/em\u003e, appearing for the first time in English translation. Based on Bouanani's own experiences as a tuberculosis patient, the hospital begins to feel increasingly like a prison or a strange nightmare: the living resemble the dead; bureaucratic angels of death descend to direct traffic, claiming the lives of a motley cast of inmates one by one; childhood memories and fantasies of resurrection flash in and out of the narrator's consciousness as the hospital transforms before his eyes into an eerie, metaphorical space. Somewhere along the way, the hospital's iron gate disappears.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike Sadegh Hedayat's \u003cem\u003eThe Blind Owl\u003c\/em\u003e, the works of Franz Kafka--or perhaps like Mann's \u003cem\u003eThe Magic Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e thrown into a meat-grinder--\u003cem\u003eThe Hospital\u003c\/em\u003e is a nosedive into the realms of the imagination, in which a journey to nowhere in particular leads to the most shocking places.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBouanani, Ahmed:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - The filmmaker and writer \u003cstrong\u003eAhmed Bouanani\u003c\/strong\u003e (1938-2011) was born in Casablanca. When Bouanani was sixteen, during the final days of the colonial era, his father, a police officer, was assassinated--a tragedy that the artist returned to in his work for the rest of his life. Bouanani studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris for three years before returning to Morocco and going on to direct several classics of North African cinema. Most of his movies had their genesis in poems, and he published three collections during his lifetime, as well as the novel \u003cem\u003eThe Hospital\u003c\/em\u003e, also appearing in English for the first time with New Directions. Never keen to publish, Bouanani left behind a trove of additional manuscripts.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eVergnaud, Lara:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eLARA VERGNAUD\u003c\/strong\u003e is an editor and literary translator who currently lives in Washington, D.C.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSubin, Anna Della:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eAnna Della Subin\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of Not Dead But Sleeping (2017). Her work has also appeared in the London Review of Books, The New York Times, and The White Review, among other places. She is a contributing editor at Bidoun.","brand":"New Directions Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50845446766866,"sku":"9780811225762","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_1a17156b-2df3-40e1-b24b-b705d9c0c9dc.jpg?v=1737351062","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-hospital-9780811225762","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}