Since World War I began two years ago, Martha and her son Salem have had no news of the husband and father who emigrated to Senegal at the beginning of the century. They decide to leave Lebanon to seek him out, and escape Ottoman oppression and crippling poverty in the process.
Having overcome countless setbacks on their journey, on the compulsory stopover in Marseille and at their arrival in Daker, they are faced with the harshest of all: Salem’s father has gone.
In telling this moving, intimate story, Mohamed Taan had no intention of tracing the history of Lebanese emigration. Yet this rich evocation of pre- war Lebanon and West Africa under French colonial rule holds all the making of an epic – a perilous journey, adaptation to a new world, disillusionment, courage and hope.
The Peanut Years has been shortlisted for five awards (including the Prix Méditerranée). A film adaptation is underway
