The Pillar of Salt     by Albert Memmi, Translated by E Roditi Original title: La Statue de sel Original language: French Published by Beacon Press Pub. Date: 1991 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.92 x 7.96 x 5.42 ISBN: 0807083275 Edition: 1st Beacon pbk. ed List Price: $21.00 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £13.35 Buy online from Amazon.com for $21.00 Published by ELEK Pub. Date: 1956 Pub. Place: UK Not available for ordering

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Memmi’s engrossing and startling book Pillar of Salt is roughly, the story of a young man growing up between Arab, Berber, Jewish and Franco-European traditions in Mid-century Tunis, Tunisia and reveals like few others both the living complexity of the Mediterranean civilisation that existed in North Africa until the early 1960s and the painful route a survivor of that world took during the period of its dissolution by a combination of colonialism, Arab nationalism and Zionism


The book’s protagonist, having a tribal Berber (some Berber tribes are Jewish) mother, an urban Jewish father, being born in Tunis and educated at a school set up by French Jews to assimilate their North African co-religionists to ‘European civilisation’. Emerging from this diverse background he says ‘I cannot be simplified’ and yet this is exactly the demand made in the 20th Century on the cultural identity of so many individuals all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Memmi’s unforgettably moving book carries us inch by inch with him along the path of a conscious and intelligent youngster forced to continually renounce old parts of himself in exchange for others. While the Lycée inducts him into the super-rational world of high French culture he returns home to the crowded den of a home that exists in a state of enormous ignorance of the modern world — bringing his Prof. home to meet Ma ‘(she) was not accustomed to shaking hands and caught hold of Poinsot’s fingers, much as one grasps a kitchen utensil.’


Although Albert Memmi’s life (until he emigrated in despair to Paris from Tunis, a city where he ‘was doomed forever to be an outsider’) has a setting and a history rather exotic for English-speaking readers, the book is an enormously universal text that explores sometimes tenderly, sometimes angrily, the too-common experience of cultural displacement. The displacement that is the experience of the petty-bourgeois or (God help him/her) working-class kid fighting for breath in the relaxed upper middle class atmosphere of a good university; the Polish Jew or Punjabi Sikh stranded on the street corner of an incomprehensible Englishness; even the youth marrying into a very different family — it seems that to cross a cultural frontier permanently is a transgression and one has to pay customs a pound of emotional flesh, leading to scars that run through whole generations....


Anyone who in their own lives, personally or through their family or partner knows this experience will recognise immediately the sad, sweet, if finally triumphant, voice of Memmi.


The other side of this story is the lesson of the violated multi-cultural empire of the Maghreb/Mediterranean, ethnically simplified after Independence, the lesson for those with ears is that we should protect our contemporary cultural mosaic in Europe, a continent (still) blessed with some cultural diversity...

‘Travel if you wish, taste strange dishes, gather experience in dangerous adventures, but see that your soul remains your own. Do not become a stranger to yourself, for you are lost from that day on; you will have no peace if there is not, somewhere within you, a corner of certainty, calm waters where you can take refuge in sleep.’ p316

Memmi’s engrossing and startling book Pillar of Salt is the story of a young man growing up between Arab, Berber, Jewish and Franco-European traditions in mid-century Tunis, Tunisia and reveals like few others the living complexity of the Mediterranean civilisation that existed in North Africa until the early 1960s. We follow the painful trajectory of a survivor of that world during the period of its dissolution by the effects of a combination of colonialist, Arab nationalist and Zionist forces.

The book’s protagonist had a tribal Berber (some Berber tribes are Jewish) mother, an urban Jewish father, was born in Tunis and educated at a school set up by French Jews to assimilate their North African co-religionists to ’European civilisation’. Emerging from this diverse background he says ’I cannot be simplified’ and yet this is exactly the demand made in the twentieth century of so many individuals all over Europe and the Mediterranean.

Memmi’s unforgettably moving book carries us inch by inch with him along the path of a conscious and intelligent youngster forced to continually renounce old parts of himself in exchange for others. While the Lycée [French High School] inducts him into the super-rational world of high French culture he returns home to the crowded den of a home that exists in a state of enormous ignorance of the modern world — bringing his Prof. home to meet Ma ’(she) was not accustomed to shaking hands and caught hold of Poinsot’s fingers, much as one grasps a kitchen utensil.’

Although Albert Memmi’s life (until he emigrated in despair from Tunis to Paris, a city where he ’was doomed forever to be an outsider’) has a setting and a history rather exotic for English-speaking readers, the book has universal qualities as it explores, sometimes tenderly, sometimes angrily, the common but often painful experience of cultural displacement. The displacement that is the experience of the petty-bourgeois or (God help him/her) working-class kid fighting for breath in the upper middle class atmosphere of a good university; the Polish Jew or Punjabi Sikh stranded on the street corner of an incomprehensible Englishness; even the young man marrying into a very different family. Crossing a cultural frontier permanently seems to be a transgression and one has to pay customs a pound of emotional flesh.

Anyone who in their own lives, personally or through their family or partner knows this experience will recognise immediately the sad, sweet, if finally triumphant, voice of Memmi.

The other side of this story is the lesson of the violated multi-cultural lands of the southern shore of the Mediterranean — particularly Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt — which were ethnically ’simplified’ after independence by Nationalist politics and the emigration of cultural minorities. The lesson for those with ears is that we should protect our contemporary cultural mosaic in Europe, a continent (still) blessed with some cultural diversity...

’Travel if you wish, taste strange dishes, gather experience in dangerous adventures, but see that your soul remains your own. Do not become a stranger to yourself, for you are lost from that day on; you will have no peace if there is not, somewhere within you, a corner of certainty, calm waters where you can take refuge in sleep.’ p316