3 out of 4 stars
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My Trip to Adele is a multiple first person narrators’ novel. It can be either a multiple viewpoint novel. It was written originally in Arabic by two siblings Rana and Ahmed Alyaseer. They translated their novel to English in attempt to publish it internationally after it was turned down by local publishers.
The novel has three narrators for three different narratives in three different countries. The first narrative took place in Morocco, where a love story was born between Elias and Malika. The couple was separated for eight years, and met desperately at Adele concert in Italy. The second drama happened in Las Vegas, where a married couple Yaser and Mariam faced serious problems in their marriage which was almost led to divorce. The last story occurred in Jordan, it focused on the life of a divorced woman Nadia and her struggle with the traditions of her society. The three narratives vary in location and content, but all meet in their narrators’ passion of the British singer Adele. The three narrators have decided to attend the Adele concert in Verona, but the only one who made it was Elias. An unexpected ending, Elias left his Malika without any explanation.
Honestly, I loved the novel and enjoyed it a lot. I got along with the characters, in specific with both Yaser and Nadia. This enjoyment is probably due to my Arab origin and due to the Interpersonal closeness between me and them. Additionally, the novel is centered around the traditions and the beliefs that most of Middle Eastern societies still hold on. It indicates to the attitudes of these societies towards the atheism and adultery. It shows the injustice of divorce on women and the selfishness of the eastern men. It demonstrates the scary faith in myths and sorcery. Briefly, the novel raised very important social issues in a smooth frankly way.
However, I have some reservations about the language of the novel. The used English was simple and smooth, but it is obvious that the authors are not native English speakers. The novel appears clearly as a translation from a different language. There were a number of Arabic idioms that was literally translated to English in a naive way. For example, the expression "I am not going to lie..." in the page no.158 is an idiom for the sentence “I’ll say it directly...” The authors also narrate many unnecessary details such as the description in the scene of the airport where Mariam went to the duty-free shop and Yasser bought a coffee. In addition, there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors, which should be reviewed and corrected.
Eventually, I rate the novel 3 out of 4 stars, despite my reservations about the language. The novel was interesting and it discusses considerable social topics in the Middle Eastern communities. Nevertheless, the authors should pay more attention to the principles of the translation from Arabic to English which will attract more English speaker readers to their novels in the future.
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My Trip to Adele
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