The intellect is practical by definition and likes to appear in control: classifying and categorizing; distinguishing between truth and falsehood, reality and illusion; putting clear ideas and demonstrations first. However, the rational mind is ill at ease when confronted with ambiguity, ambivalence, and all the shades of grey that disrupt its truths. And yet isn’t illusion the heart of existence itself? That is precisely what we discover with rapture in /The Offering/: the subtle distinctions of life, of every human experience expressed beyond the restrictive boundaries of logic. Like Job, Tariq Abbassi has lost everything; and yet for all his desolation, he tries to find an escape within himself—in the words that bring meaning and structure to his life. The quest for beauty becomes Tariq’s only guide in his distress and we find ourselves drawn into his mind, fascinated, mesmerized. When describing the style of Salah el Moncef, one adjective comes to mind: dazzling. His poetic prose makes us experience the world in all its sensual beauty…
