The Clash of Images

The contradiction inherent in a culture that banishes images and the idolatry associated with them, yet can't banish people's powerfully instinctual hunger for them, is a unifying theme of Abdelfattah Kilito's mesmerizing short story collection, The Clash of Images. Kilito's prose, lovingly translated from the French by Robyn Creswell, gracefully combines wistful recollection with literary semiotics as he recounts the colonialist encroachment of modernity on a coastal Moroccan village as seen through the eyes of his innocent protagonist, Abdallah. Whether writing about a rebellious student at school, the deaths of Abdallah's grandfather and mother, or the class differences on display in something as simple as a trip to the movies, Kilito's voice is consistently charming, agile, and haunted by an elegiac sorrow that never turns leaden. Every one of these linked stories contains a surprise—an unexpected turn of events or an excursion into fantasy—yet there's not a trace of self-conscious gimmickry at work. Bearing witness to what gets altered by the erosion of time while recording incursions of the new, The Clash of Images floats in a liberated atmosphere of intellectual free association while remaining grounded in memories and the inevitable images they conjure up.