The latest addition to my website is Hassouna Mosbahi‘s النهر مرتين»، دار الآداب، (We Never Swim in the Same River Twice). This book tells the stories of three friends in Tunisia during the failed Arab Spring. Omran is an intellectual who has moved to France (primarily for political reasons) but comes back to Tunisia to visit. He turns to primarily Western writers for his extensive reading. Saleem is married with a good job but is going through a severe mental health crisis and deteriorates during the course of the book. Aziz is a retired postal clerk, something of hypochondriac, who reads and watches films (Western in both cases) but does little else. The situation in Tunisia is grim as the country seems to be falling apart, though we go much further back, to the struggle for Tunisian independence. In the present, the black beards – the religious fanatics – attack anyone and everyone opposed to their views and we see many examples of their and other violence. Overall Mosbahi makes it clear that the country is falling apart as is the Arab world as a whole because of dictators and fanaticism. There is devastation occurring everywhere in the world. Inquisitions will return. Books will be burned again. Poets will be slain. Philosophers will be banished. Women will be stoned. It is often grim reading but superbly written.