Prof. Frances Malino (Emerita, Wellesley College) will discuss Blanche Bendahan’s Mazaltob: A Novel, Edited by Yaëlle Azagury & Frances Malino (Brandeis University Press, 2024).

Raised in the juderia or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco at the turn of the 20th century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José a man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to seek a wife.  In this award-winning poetic novel, Algerian-born Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the juderia and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love.