Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The End of the Sahara by Said Khatibi

 

The End of the Sahara is set in the late summer and early autumn of 1988 in and around the central Algerian city of Bou Saada. It tells of multiple crimes, both significant and petty, but the focal point is the murder of Zakia Zaghouani, the young and attractive singer at the Hotel Sahara. Zaza had many admirers and others were jealous of her successes. In addition, her family was appalled at her refusal to lead a conventional Muslim life.

Written by Said Khatibi, who grew up in Bou Saada, the narrative incorporates a backdrop of local corruption, administrative incompetence, and wrenching deprivation. The memory of the Algerian War of Independence, which Algeria waged against France from 1954 to 1962, is still strong but the governance structure that replaced French rule has not been successful. With little water, food, or electricity, the country’s long-suffering residents finally rose in a mass protest a few days after the end of this book with devastating results.

The author’s note at the beginning of the book states that “It is a tribute to the more than five hundred people who died fighting for freedom on October 5, 1988, and to women who fought on this day and every day, resisting a violent patriarchal system that aims to control them.”

Originally published in Arabic as Nihayat Al-Sahra by Hachette Antoine, Beirut, in 2022, the book won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the Young Author category in 2023. The original text has been translated beautifully by Alexander Elinson, Associate Professor of Arabic at Hunter College in New York, for publication by Bitter Lemon Press of London. Bitter Lemon Press has an impressive catalog of crime fiction in translation from all parts of the world. Their finalist designation for the 2025 Crime Writers’ Association Publisher’s Dagger recognizes Bitter Lemon Press’s efforts to deliver quality books in English from uncommon sources.

Interestingly, we never hear from the victim directly. We only know what others thought of her and their experiences with her. About six narrators explain individually what they knew of the singer and the events leading up to her death and perhaps twice that many characters support the story; keeping track of who is who can be challenging. A helpful roster of characters is found at the end of the book.

With only minimal knowledge of Algeria’s history, I realized I was missing the subtext of the story as I read. An article by M. Lynx Qualey in ArabLit was most helpful in that regard: Looking for Ghosts: On Said Khatibi’s ‘End of the Sahara’. I recommend a review of this essay before beginning the book.

Kirkus starred review. 

 

 

·         Publisher: ‎Bitter Lemon Press

·         Publication date: ‎March 24, 2026

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎336 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1916725228

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1916725225

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4cb3USB

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Red Water by Jurica Pavičić (Translator Matt Robinson)

 

Red Water (Bitter Lemon Press, June 24, 2025) starts out simply enough with the disappearance of Silva Vela on a late September Saturday in 1989 after a beach party. She had dined with her parents and twin brother as always; even when Silva was found to be missing Sunday morning, everyone was sure she had stayed with a friend overnight. But she didn’t return and the police were notified. No trace of her was found and her family slowly disintegrated. The official investigation was derailed by the Croatian War of Independence that officially began in 1991 with the secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia but the political unrest with the resulting impacts on daily life started well before then.

The book has four parts: the first with chapters from the perspective of each of Silva’s parents and her twin brother in 1989; the second with notes from her family, the police investigator, and suspects in her disappearance, all during the war and its aftermath; the last two parts with chapters from her family members and the original police investigator in 2015 and 2016.

The multiple points of view and the dramatic alteration in the country over the 25 years in question provide a striking narrative. The reader never does hear from Silva directly, so all we know is how other people saw her and how profoundly her disappearance affected everyone around her.

The translation is beautifully done, resulting in a story that flows smoothly despite the repeated changes in speaker and time. The resolution is as unexpected as it is satisfying.

Jurica Pavičić lives in Split, the second largest city in Croatia, formerly Yugoslavia. He is a novelist, screenwriter, short story writer, and journalist. His thrillers and crime novels mix social analysis and morally complex situations. His novels have won several Croatian literary awards. Crvena Voda [Red Water] (Profil Knjiga, 2017) received the Ksaver Šandor Gjalski Prize for best Croatian novel in 2018, and the Fric Prize for best Croatian fiction in 2019. In France, it won the Great Prize of Detective Literature 2021, the Prix Mystère de la critique 2022, Prix Le Point du polar européen 2021, and the Prix Transfuge for the best foreign crime novel 2021. This is the first of his books to be translated into English.

UK-born Matt Robinson moved to Belgrade to join the pioneering independent radio station B92 as a news presenter and editor. Between 2004 and 2018 he worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters News. He now lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, working as a freelance editor and literary translator.

London-based Bitter Lemon Press, publisher of the English translation of Red Water, has been shortlisted for the 2025 Crime Writers' Association Dagger for Best Crime & Mystery Publisher. https://thecwa.co.uk/awards-and-competitions/the-daggers/publishers-dagger/

The Crime Fiction Lover ezine conducted an interview with Pavičic in May:

https://crimefictionlover.com/2025/05/interview-jurica-pavicic/

The English translation is garnering one glowing review after another:

"This finely engineered, haunting novel has been deservedly garlanded with awards.” ---Financial Times

“A brilliant cocktail of mystery and recent history, compellingly told."--Kirkus

“The best crime fiction of 2025 so far: In this outstanding novel, Jurica Pavicic uses the unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl, Silva, to document the impact of the Yugoslav civil war." --Times/Sunday Times

 

• Publisher: ‎Bitter Lemon Press
• Publication date: ‎June 24, 2025
• Language: ‎English
• Print length: ‎402 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎1916725155
• ISBN-13: ‎978-1916725157

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/44fXuMd

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Best Enemy by Sergio Olguin

 

Sergio Olguin is an Argentine journalist and fiction writer. His work has been translated into German, French, and Italian. His books about investigative journalist Veronica Rosenthal are his first pieces to be translated into English. The fourth book in the series The Best Enemy was translated by Miranda France. It was originally published in Spanish as La Mejor Enemiga by Alfaguara (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina) in 2021. The English translation is being released in March 2025 by Bitter Lemon Press in the UK. For an informative interview with Olguin, see the Crime Fiction Lover article here: https://crimefictionlover.com/2025/02/interview-sergio-olguin/

Veronica works for Nuestro Tiempo, a news magazine, and lives with her long-time lover Federico Cordova, who is a senior manager at the law firm owned by Veronica’s father. Veronica is feeling a bit bored with life as the book opens. Then she learns she is pregnant and that respected journalist freelancer Andres Goicochea has been killed and his partner Patricia Beltrán injured.

The authorities categorize the shootings as a robbery attempt but Veronica and her journalist friends are suspicious. They learn that Goicochea had been looking into questionable business dealings by the owners of a wealthy media empire. Apparently quite dubious because the journalists became the target of thugs trying to retrieve whatever information the journalists had acquired. Kidnapping, shooting, blackmail, and stabbing ensued.

Interspersed with the gangs chasing the journalists are multiple subplots: Veronica analyzes her feelings about her pregnancy and Federico. Rosenthal Law’s part in a contentious divorce is surprisingly complicated. There are long flashbacks about Veronica’s childhood and family, especially her grandfather, which incorporate a sweeping review of Argentine socio-politics.

The readability of a foreign book depends on the quality of the translation; Miranda France did outstanding work with this novel. An author herself as well as a journalist, foreign correspondent, and Spanish literature teacher, the narrative reads as if it were originally written in English. Really well done.

So little South American crime fiction is available in translation that devoted followers of the genre owe it to themselves to look up this series just to get a sense of the style. While there is substantial text extraneous to the crime story, I found the extensive background useful to my understanding of the history of the nation and its society. This book is not a quick read, though, and the cast of characters can be hard to track.

Review from Kirkus:  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sergio-olguin/the-best-enemy/

Review from Crime Fiction Lover: https://crimefictionlover.com/2025/02/the-best-enemy-by-sergio-olguin/

Review from Shots Crime & Thriller Ezine: http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/book_reviews_view.aspx?BOOK_REVIEW_ID=2874

 

·         Publisher: ‎Bitter Lemon Press (March 25, 2025)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎352 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1916725090

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1916725096

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4kKfoy9

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.