Miské's debut novel Arab Jazz is the winner of an English PEN award. It is brilliantly translated by Sam Gordon. The setting – “between the Lubavitch school complex, the Salafist prayer room and the evangelical church” is Paris's Nineteenth Arrondisement. Ahmed Taroudant, the novel’s main protagonist, is in some respects a typical French Arab – religiously non-observant, confused about his identity, haunted by the past and now set up to take the blame for murder. The 19th arrondissement in Paris is a cosmopolitan district where citizens of disparate backgrounds live, love and worship alongside one another. The peace is shattered when Ahmed Taroudant’s melancholy daydreams are interrupted by the blood dripping from his upstairs neighbor’s corpse. The murder of Laura Vignola, and the pork joint placed next to her, set imaginations ablaze across the neighborhood, and Ahmed finds himself the prime suspect. But detectives Rachel Kuperstein and Jean Hamelot have plenty of other leads. Karim Miské demonstrates a sharp eye for character and an evocative sense of place, moving between the sensual hum of Paris and the gritty streets of Brooklyn to reveal the motives behind the crime.
Karim Miské was born in 1964 in Abidjan to a Mauritanian father and a French mother. He grew up in Paris before leaving to study journalism in Dakar. Miske´ now lives in France, and is making documentary films on a wide range of subjects, including deafness, for which he learned sign language, and the common roots between the Jewish and Islamic religions. Arab Jazz is his first novel.
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