The Last Patriarch
2008
First Published
3.62
Average Rating
336
Number of Pages
An explosive novel which pits fathers against daughters and duty against desire.Straight talking and fiery, Mimoun's daughter is everything he wishes she weren't. When he leaves Morocco for Catalonia, he wants to improve his own life without allowing Western culture to affect his wife or children at all. He expects them to stay in Morocco, while he enjoys the sophistication and freedom of Barcelona.His plans are thrown into disarray when his family insists on joining him in Catalonia. Things get much worse when his daughter starts reading the dictionary, and taking on the Catalonians at their own language...The Last Patriarch, a bestseller when published in 2008, was awarded the most prestigious Catalan literary prize, the Ramon Llull. It has been translated into all the major European languages and also won the Prix Ulysse, France.
Avg Rating
3.62
Number of Ratings
713
5 STARS
20%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
8%
1 STARS
4%
goodreads
Author
Najat El Hachmi
Author · 8 books
At the age of 8, Najat El Hachmi immigrated with her family to Catalonia, Spain. She studied Arab literature at the University of Barcelona. She began writing when she was twelve years old and has continued ever since, first as entertainment, and later as a means to express concerns or to reflect and re-create her own reality, in the (at least) two cultures to which she belongs. Her first book, Jo també sóc catalana (I am also Catalan, 2004), was strictly autobiographical, dealing with the issue of identity, and the growth of her sense of belonging to her new country. In 2008, she won one of the most prestigious award in Catalan letters, the Ramon Llull prize, for her novel L'últim patriarca (The Last Patriarch).
