Now & Then Redux: Two Long Stories and a Conversation

As its title suggests, Now & Then is an urgent plea to revisit the present in relation to the past—to bear in mind the admonition that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (William Faulkner). Lurking behind the warning is a ponderous question that haunts this collection of stories and essays: Are we going to have to relive it all over again—the era of racial, ethnic, and national tensions that made the 1930s such a terrifying decade in the history of western societies? In two stories and two essays, Salah el Moncef conjures up a set of fearful symmetries between the flimsy diversity and globalism of “Now,” and the authoritarian, martial echoes of “Then,” a world long consigned to the ash heap of history—or so we think. Moncef’s collection of stories and essays is a timely reminder that Now and Then are frightfully similar—a warning we would do well to heed.