The Reluctant Agent

by Carolyn Thorman, Washington Writers' Publishing House
An accomplished work that evokes universality through reporting the exact detail of a particular place.

by Mike Langan, fiction judge of Washington Writers' Publishing House fiction competition, 2000
Everything is right about this novel: characterization, setting, dialogue, plot.

Book Description
Habib Ben Hamed, a young Tunisian intellectual, returns to Tunisia after living three years in France, where he had become embittered by French racism and remorseful for having abandoned Nouba, who was carrying his child at the time of his departure for France. He takes a job as a copy editor for a French language newspaper, manages to reconcile with Nouba, who had become a highly paid prostitute during his absence, and with great joy assumes his role of father to his three year old son. After Nouba retires from her "profession," Habib reluctantly accepts a job as an informant in the internal security apparatus, working under his older brother, Tarek, whom he loathes, in order to support his family. Tarek, engaged in a conspiracy to topple a government minister carrying out an economic collectivization campaign, orders Habib to spy on a leftist intellectual. Habib become friends with the intellectual and tries to protect him from being tortured by Tarek at a time of a crackdown on dissent.

About the Author
Kurata grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and studied at Kansas University where he received a Bachelor's and a Master's degree. He drew on his experiences of living five years in Tunisia, as a student and Peace Corps volunteer, to write The Reluctant Agent. Kurata later lived in the Far East, teaching English, writing letters for a trading company and boxing before he became a news reporter, a trade he practiced in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China and France. He currently lives in Wheaton, Maryland.


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