Half Truth follows Zahra, a young Moroccan Australian woman, and her grandmother, Khadija. In alternating narratives, the novel follows the pair as they come of age in their respective timelines.
The reader only sees Zahra aged 22, when she is a new mother to baby Amir, born in rural lutruwita/Tasmania, and she sets out to search for her estranged father in his homeland, Morocco. Conversely, the novel follows the shape of Khadija’s life in its entirety, following her from formative events in her childhood to reaching puberty and through to marriage, motherhood and old age, where her story intersects with Zahra’s.
The shape of the multigenerational family story is familiar but in its international scope it treads fresh ground for a local debut. The novel speaks to the experience of growing up within a first generation in diaspora and the isolation and examination that can bring, while more familiarly wading through the historical and political happenings that can lead to this being one’s place.
Half Truth shines in its evocation of the environment and atmosphere of its settings and eras. In its characters is an inherent, multifaceted exploration of empire and conquest in Morocco and the multidimensionality of the country’s people and cultures today. Through this all is the heartbeat of womanhood and resilience.
Nadia Mahjouri’s descriptive portrayal of historical landscapes reminds me of Leïla Slimani’s The Country of Others trilogy, with a complex dual timeline that will appeal to readers of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or Sreedhevi Iyer’s The Tiniest House of Time.
