L'Amour des choses invisibles by Zied Bakir

 L'Amour des choses invisibles

by Zied Bakir is one of my best readings of this 2021.

Written  with great erudition and complexity, spanning from religion to daily life anedocts, intriguing characters and interesting facts, this story starts (the first pages  focus in the current events, but the reader will be soon transported in the past events that caused the imprisonment of the guy)  when the main character, an unregular immigrant but intelligent and with a great erudition  visits  the Cathedral of Notre-Dame for discovering there a girl, Pomme, in contemplation close to a statue that to her, for obvious reasons that you will read, means a lot.

After a visit in the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, where they are attracted by an englidsh edition of Le Petit Prince, Pomme asks him, although he is muslin, if he wants to attend with her the pilgrimage to Compostelle. I didn't have any clue that this pilgrimage is so articulated and that leave at the end also a certification that it has been attended. A pleasant surprise.

In the while, doing this, they meet along their way extraordinary people: brief meetings for necessity that anyway touch their hearts.

Once returned home, the idea of going to the Mecca, the islamic most known mosque is great. After all he is 33 years, he should do that. 

He decides to leaving Paris for good, expulsed for his own desire.

I loved the funny dialogue with the police woman: he invented a story of a lonely arrival in Lampedusa; completely false.

Once in Libia he will discover that the song is not as nice as he thought  and that this new pilgrimage with a civil war going on can't be after all so successful. And in fact he will be put in jail. No one believes that he is a pilgrim. Everyone think that he is a spy. During a war aren't there a lot of spies?

He will continue to hear from Pomme and the idea, matured, after that weeks of seclusions is to return to Paris. And this time for good and forever. He discovers to be in love for that  city; and that he wants to spend the rest of his time in the french capital.

Once in prison  he will meet particular friends, one of them with the story of a diagnoys of death and the following  idea of leaving his town for seeing the world, attending a beautiful departure (I won't tell you more for not spoling too much) another one is a criminal specialized in the art of stealing cars: our hero will also see the first dead man, a condition never seen before and pretty disturbing.

I absolutely fell in love for the imam of the mosque dedicated to Rimbaud. What an excellent great mind! and thoughts! 

I absolutely adore this book, for the thematics expressed, for the density of thoughts, for the original storytelling that the writer decided to propose to his readers.

An excellent reading for this summer-time if you want to explore other parts of the world, if you want to think, if you want to learn more on other religions, and last but not least if you want to discover the meaning of home for an immigrant; a meaning that passes through a special country and an adorable city.

Highly recommended.

I thank L'Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori