Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud
Introduction by Anna Della Subin
*When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive....
" So begins Ahmed Bouanani's arresting, hal-
lucinatory novel The Hospital. The unnamed narrator quickly becomes immersed in this strange microcosm populated with fellow dreamers and invalids, and as time passes-or seems to pass-it begins to feel increasingly like a prison or a nightmare: the living resemble the dead; bureaucratic angels of death descend to direct traffic, claiming the lives of the motley cast of inmates one by one; childhood memories and fantasies of resurrection flash in and out of the narrator's conscious-ness. Somewhere along the way, the hospital's iron gate disappears.
Like Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl, the works of Franz Kafka, or perhaps Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain put through a meat grinder, The Hospital is a nosedive into fiercely alive, unreal realms, and an utterly singular modern classic.
"The Hospital has attained cult status. - The Brooklyn Rail
"Dark, Kafkaesque, very unique. An exciting discovery." -Jeff VanderMeer
"A dreamlike and symbolic excursion into an institution that represents suffering humanity: now translated for the first time, this novel by the Moroccan writer and filmmaker Bouanani plunges the reader into a world of pain, misery, and mystery-a world in which no one leaves the hospital because no one is ever cured. -Kirkus Reviews
The writer, poet, illustrator, and filmmaker AHMED BOUANANI (1938-2011) was a key figure in the Moroccan literary and artistic scene. First published in 1990, The Hospital fell into obscurity until it was republished in France and Morocco to great critical acclaim in 2012. LARA VERGNAUD has received a PEN/Heim Translation Grant and a French Voices Award and was long-listed for the National Translation Award. ANNA DELLA SUBIN is the author of Not Dead But Sleeping and the forthcoming Accidental Gods.