Ian Young spent a summer as a medical student in a provincial maternity unit in Algeria. This book is taken from the diary he began on arrival, when he found himself the privileged witness of the insides not just of Kabyl women, but also some much-trumpeted ideology. The immediate villains are a couple of expatriate Bulgarian gynaecologists. Dr Vasilev, at the closing stages of a career of fathomless incompetence, forms a bond of affection with the author and they spend many hours in the office over an old route map of ...
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Ian Young spent a summer as a medical student in a provincial maternity unit in Algeria. This book is taken from the diary he began on arrival, when he found himself the privileged witness of the insides not just of Kabyl women, but also some much-trumpeted ideology. The immediate villains are a couple of expatriate Bulgarian gynaecologists. Dr Vasilev, at the closing stages of a career of fathomless incompetence, forms a bond of affection with the author and they spend many hours in the office over an old route map of Bulgaria, discussing mileages and motorcycles as Maternity drifts beneath them like an abandoned ship. Dr Kostov packs a powerful bedside punch and saves his humanitarian feelings for the health of the Deutschmark. The two form a macabre comic team as they take the reader through a series of medical nightmares. But their lot is scarcely more enviable than that of their female victims: the foreign doctors are the unhappy executors, working in blood, excrement and death, of the most respected attitudes in Algeria. The Private Life of Islam is a ruthlessly clear-sighted view of a particular place at a particular time. It is also a classic in the art of story-telling.'A real achievement, personal as well as literary.' David Pryce-Jones, The Times'A parable of the reality behind a vast amount of modern social and political fantasy, even in the most developed of countries.' David Holden, Sunday Times
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Add this copy of The Private Life of Islam: an Algerian Diary to cart. $4.63, very good condition, Sold by Books From California rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Simi Valley, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by London: Pimlico 1991.
Add this copy of The Private Life of Islam to cart. $11.25, very good condition, Sold by Argosy Book Store rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from New York, NY, UNITED STATES, published 1974 by Liveright.
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Seller's Description:
308pp. 8vo, brown cloth, d.w., New York: Liveright, (1974). Very good. A young doctor's harrowing account of a season in an Algerian maternity hospital.
Add this copy of The Private Life of Islam to cart. $21.93, like new condition, Sold by Basement Seller 101 rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Cincinnati, OH, UNITED STATES, published 1974 by Liveright.
Add this copy of The Private Life of Islam: a Young Doctor's Harrowing to cart. $24.41, good condition, Sold by Lawrence Jones rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Nobby Beach, QLD, AUSTRALIA, published 1974 by Liveright.
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Seller's Description:
Good to Very Good in Good jacket. 8vo. vii, 307 pages. Fore-edge lightly foxed and with a trace of damp (no text affected). Cloth boards in dust-jacket which has a damp stain by its lower edge, more noticable on the rear panel than on the front.
Add this copy of The Private Life of Islam: an Algerian Diary: VI to cart. $32.49, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Pimlico.
Add this copy of The Private Life of Islam to cart. $82.35, new condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from North Las Vegas, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1974 by Liveright.
