Barq al-layl (Uyun al-muasarah)

Set in Tunis during the Hafsid era of the sixteenth century, Barq al-Layl (Night Lightning) tells the story of a Black enslaved man, known as Barq al-Layl, and his forbidden love for Rīm, one of the wives of his master. Against the backdrop of a city on the edge of upheaval — with the Spanish invasion of 1535 looming over the Mediterranean — their bond becomes a lens onto the cruelties and hypocrisies of a society built on bondage.

Béchir Khraïef (al-Bashīr Khurayyif), widely regarded as the father of the modern Tunisian novel, writes with vivid historical detail and an unusual empathy for the marginalized: slaves, servants, and the poor of old Tunis. Beneath its historical romance, the novel works as a moral tale and a veiled political commentary, using the sixteenth-century foreign invasion as an analogy for the French colonization of Tunisia in the author's own time.

First published in 1961, Barq al-Layl is a landmark of Arabic-language Tunisian literature, notable both for its social conscience and for Khraïef's pioneering use of Tunisian idiom and setting. It remains a touchstone in the history of the North African novel.