The Watchers: A Novel by

Tahar Djaout, Algerian author of The Last Summer of Reason, was killed in 1993 at the age of 39 in an attack attributed to an Islamic fundamentalist group. The Watchers, the writer's second novel to be published in English, is a pensive, darkly humorous work about an inventor's quest to register his invention and an old rebel's final burst of paranoia. Working late at night, Mahfoudh Lemdjad draws up plans for a modernized loom; Menouar Ziada spots Lemdjad's lighted windows and suspects that he is plotting against the government. False accusations nearly sink Lemdjad, but the tables are unexpectedly turned at the novel's conclusion. Djaout's clotted prose makes for slow going, but his examination of the vagaries of power is illuminating. Trans. from the French by Marjolijn de Jager.