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Mehdi Belhaj Kacem. Cancer. Auch, Fr. Tristram. 1994. 233 pages. 100 F. ISBN 2-907681-07-9.
--. 1993. Auch, Fr. Tristram. 1994. 197 pages. 90 F. ISBN 2-907681-08-7.
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, born in Paris in 1973, is of Tunisian origin. Cancer, written before Belhaj Kacem was twenty, is a disturbing, if not disturbed (anti) novel from a highly talented youth. It would seen to be motivated by revolt, dissatisfaction, and a mal de vivre. Belhaj Kacem takes for his protagonist Frank Stamin, a young musician, maladjusted and intelligent, at loggerheads with his family, school, and society. Idols of the bourgeoisie are desecrated, sullied, and derided in this fantasmatic exercise de style. Parents, the school system, relations with the opposite sex, even the novelistic...