The Provocations of Kamel Daoud

Journalist and translator Elisabeth Zerofsky introduces her deft translation of author Kamel Daoud’s essay on sex in the Muslim world. Daoud’s piece provoked a media frenzy when it was published in France earlier this year. Everyone, including the French prime minister, seemed compelled to weigh in. Zerofsky also translated the correspondence, initially private but later published in Le Monde, between writer Adam Shatz and Daoud in which Shatz calmly confronts his friend over his contentious column. According to Zerofsky, the exchange circles around key questions: “Who has the right to speak on behalf of whom? . . . And, as thousands of refugees from the Middle East arrive in Europe, what discussions are necessary and which, if any, are off limits?”