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The Fire Within
by
Touhfat Mouhtare
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | The Fire Within |
| Author: | Touhfat Mouhtare |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 2022 (Eng. 2025) |
| Length: | 310 pages |
| Original in: | French |
| Availability: | The Fire Within - US |
| The Fire Within - UK | |
| The Fire Within - Canada | |
| Le feu du milieu - Canada | |
| Le feu du milieu - France | |
| directly from: Dedalus |
- French title: Le feu du milieu
- Translated by Rachael McGill
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Our Assessment:
B+ : brightly imagined and well-told
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| La Croix | . | 23/11/2022 | Laurence Péan |
| Le Monde | . | 14/10/2022 | Gladys Marivat |
From the Reviews:
- "Dans cette odyssée tumultueuse, l’auteure maintient le cap, faisant éclore les thèmes présents dans ces deux précédents livres qui lui tiennent à cœur : la soumission des femmes, le poids de la religion, la transmission du savoir... En s’attachant aux combats obstinés de Gaillard et d’Halima pour la liberté, elle déploie un paysage mouvant d’où émane une promesse de lumière." - Laurence Péan, La Croix
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
The Fire Within is set on the island of Grande Comore, in the time before it was annexed by France.
The novel is mostly narrated by Hardie, a third-generation slave (her grandparents: "had been taken from their own country", her parents were already born on the island) who begins her story when she is still a child.
She does not know who her father is, and her mother fled after trying to kill her in infancy; she has been raised by much-loved Tamu, "the woman I thought of as my mother".
Along with several other young maids, Hardie takes lessons about the Qur'an from Fundi Ahmad (who has an ongoing affair with Tamu).
She is a bright girl -- and Fundi recognizes something special in her:
You're not like the others. you learn in a different way, and you have a true relationship with the sacred text. That's not the case for everyone, and believe me, not even some of the greatest scholars can read the Qur'an with the attention that you show. In fact, attention is not the word. You seem inhabited by the Qur'an.Still, she is a slave, and knows her place -- including the inappropriateness of befriending Halima, the daughter of Charif Mohamed, the chief of Itsandra. But Halima enlists her help, first to learn how to swim and then also to take care of an object for her: wrapped in cloth, Hardie is to hold onto it -- but never remove the wrapping.
Halima has her own ideas about the meaning of some of the Qur'an -- notably about the place and rights of women, challenging received opinion. She finds true love in her arranged marriage, though it takes a while until she can embrace it; her husband is patient and understanding, and: "I was a child when Fadili married me, and he treated me like one until I became a woman". They are happy for a decade -- "ten years passed in a bliss that few clouds obscured" -- but there's a hitch: they never went through the elaborate ceremonies expected when the daughter of such an important man married, and so when she catches the eye of Fundi Ahmad and he wishes to make her his third wife there's no escaping it.
Halima continues to long for her true love -- and turns to the now-adult Hardie, figuring:
Let's unite our solitudes, as we tried to do once before. If you help me, I'll help you. My heart tells me we're going to move forward together.When Hardie then loses her greatest hold, beloved Tamu, both are indeed left seeking. Tamu's is only one of the disappearances that seem to be going on -- slaves apparently being kidnapped -- and Halima helps Hardie investigate the disappearances (even as Fundi warns Hardie to stay away from Halima). Halima is determined: "We both want the same thing. To be reunited with someone we love".
The wrapped item Halima had given Hardie to look after comes into play as well, as Halima finally unwraps and reveals it. It is one of five -- with Halima already having one of the others -- and holds both great danger and power. Hardie's experiences veer increasingly into the fantastical, as she finds herself transported in time, place, and identity: among others, she finds herself as Miguel de Cervantes, for example, and Theon of Alexandria (famous also as Hypatia's father).
Already fairly early on, as she begins going down these paths, Hardie recognizes: "My world would never be the same again", and she experiences several very different kinds of lives before the resolution, which finds her again as herself, but whole and in somewhat different circumstances (though also still a slave -- though: "servant to the most open-minded master on this island").
Colorful and engaging, The Fire Within wends somewhat wildly between reality and the fantastical, but remains well-grounded with its focus on its strong central characters -- Hardie above all, but also Halima, as well as Fundi and Tamu. The cultural and religious mix presented here -- not least in the depiction of Islam -- is also of particular interest. If things veer off at times, the writing (and action) is always gripping, and Hardie's journey and travails captivating. The mix can be a bit heady at times, but Mouhtare does always get things back on course.
- M.A.Orthofer, 3 December 2025
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The Fire Within:
- Dedalus publicity page
- Pocket publicity page
- Le Bruit du Monde publicity page
- La Cause Littéraire (French)
- Chroniques littraires africaines (French)
- Des Pages et des îles (French)
- The Modern Novel
- Zébuline (French)
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Comorian author Touhfat Mouhtare was born in 1986.
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© 2025 the complete review
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