Review of -- The Expelled by Mois Benarroch

Review by Ikingi -- The Expelled by Mois Benarroch

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The Expelled vividly captures the urge to belong to a society that constantly criticizes you. How do you fit in a community that supposedly welcomes you with open arms but later on digs into your origin? Mois uses the context of stories within a story creatively without breaking the flow. Stuck between defending his identity as a Jew and defending his place of birth, language and culture, he creatively uses own persona to bring out the challenges affecting immigrant communities.

Mois explore various themes through self-dialogue as well as conversations in juxtaposition. Do we belong just because we share the same ethnicity? Do we belong just because we believe that the land we live in was granted to us by our creator? How do we treat people who supposedly belong to us but where born and brought up in diverse continents and culture? How do we blend in, accommodate and flourish in our diversity rather than disintegrate.

The book is an interesting read for individuals in structured communities that are trying to evolve into a global village. Combined with Mois’ prose, stories within a story, The Expelled is an intuitive read. I would have also loved to read the book in its original language, Hebrew. However, that’s a challenge to me an East African used to English as the main foreign language from my childhood. The book will be an interesting read to people in states facing constant change especially, negative ethnicity as well as string individual opinions.

The bus ride from ocean to sea across Europe clearly brings out the divisions we create in our own minds. The Front people despise the back people for the mere fact that they are seated at the back. Do we choose where to seat on a bus? Should we be hated for sitting at the back of the bus? Low self-esteem by the back people is vividly brought out by Grammatical and her lover.

Is Cash’s death literal? From the bus story, Cash is both literal and also used metaphorically to show what we the world adore. The passengers decide to pray to cash, whom they have now christened a saint for their own safety and to keep off self-guilt. Even though the team is hungry, we can’t rule out the passengers had cash but there were no shops to buy food.

This is an interesting book for all literature lovers. I would recommend the book to anyone interested in building their story telling skills even though it might be boring to casual readers. I give the book a 3 out of 4 stars.

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Read THE EXPELLED/ EL EXPULSADO IN

English getbook.at/theExpelled

FRANCAIS   getbook.at/lExpulse

Italiano  getbook.at/lEspulso

español  getbook.at/elExpulsado

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