Tunisia

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 3

Tunisia

About Tunisia. By John Anthony. Bles. 221 pp.

This perhaps too literal title covers a work of wit. erudition and charm. The author is an American who served in Tunisia for five years in the consular service, and being, as the saying is. “a born writer’’ he has committed to print impressions of his encounters with all sorts and conditions of people, as well as his explorations of a terrain rich in its associations with the beginnings of civilisation.

From Neolithic times onwards Tunisia is known to have been inhabited, and Herodotus, who is widely quoted in these pages gives a picture of one integrated race, the Berbers, who flourished in this part of the world well over 2000 years ago Carthage rose as a global trading centre, only to be finally overcome by Rome. Byzantines. Vandals and Arabs followed as conquerors of the land, and in the 7th Century the city of Kairwan was founded by a Moslem. Sidi Oqba. from which time the Mohammedan influence has been largely predominant.

The authors dissections on the history of the country are never dull, but the people he met in it are just as vividly evoked His personal evolvement with Jamila the bellydancer, and her ultimately horrific fate are both recorded Roxane, the femme du monde, through whom amongst others, be was to meet his future wife is a woman of unusual character and gifts as ts Laila. the part-slave-part-child of the painter Beshir whose odd relationship to her owner-family is rooted tn the custom of the country. She worked devotedly as housekeeper tor the author, but was not above indulging tn some funny business when a mistress of the house was introduced Hiere is a richly eomie episode in the hyglenically-minded American girl whose horror of coloured people and the lesser fauna of the country kept her perpetually enveloped in a cocoon of DDT and maidenly virtue As a study of a littleknown people and their country this book can be highly recommended It also has «ome excellent photographs and thumbnail sketches.