LARB Radio Hour: Abdellah Taia's "Another Morocco"; Gershom Scholem's "Mystical Messiah Sabbatai Sevi"

By LARB Radio HourApril 28, 2017

In a powerful show, author Abdellah Taia talks with co-hosts Kate Wolf and Eric Newman about his new collection from Semiotexte, Another Morocco. He discusses his experience as the first prominent Moroccan author to come out of the closet, his love of Morocco, how he knew he would lose part of himself when he moved to France, and his bitterness towards French liberal society, which may be less homophobic, but is not tolerant of the young man he was in Morocco. George Prochnik, author of a new book about Gershom Scholem, returns to recommend Scholem's magisterial biography The Mystical Messiah: Sabbatai Sevi about one of the most astonishing figures in Jewish history.