We Never Swim in the Same River Twice

During Tunisia’s Arab Spring and its tilt toward Islamism, we meet three friends: Saleem, who is about to turn fifty and whose once-blissful marriage teeters on the edge as his mental health deteriorates; Aziz, a homely retired postal clerk who finds solace in literature and international cinema; and Omran, a well-traveled writer and public intellectual navigating a complex relationship with a young Franco-Tunisian woman who lives in Paris. As these men forge an unlikely friendship over drinks at a coastal bar in Bizerte and during walks on the beach, they grapple with the political extremism that dominates Tunisia’s social and political life at the time. Repelled by Islamist rhetoric and the brand of masculinity it represents, the three friends recall their lives and question their relationship to their nation.

We Never Swim in the Same River Twice offers an alternative narrative of the Arab Spring, one that challenges Western media’s depiction of a ＂blessed revolution,＂ and gives readers an intimate and elegiac portrait of a recent period in Tunisian history.

Hassouna Mosbahi is an award-winning Tunisian writer, literary critic, and journalist. He is the author of several novels and short story collections, including Solitaire and A Tunisian Tale.

William Maynard Hutchins is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy & Religion at Appalachian State University. His translations include Hassan Nasr’s Return to Dar al-Basha and Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Modern.