We’re only weeks away from the launch of our Fall 2015 season, but why wait? Over the next couple of weeks, we’re giving you an exclusive look at the exciting new books about to land at Melville House—debut novels, major translations, and nonfiction about everything from dog walking to cocktail culture. We’ll feature a different excerpt every day, along with an introduction by our editors. Today’s book is The Happy Marriage, by Tahar Ben Jelloun, out January 5. 

Unlike much of the internet, I find the hubbub over spoiler warnings a bit overstated. Is it really such a big deal if a plot point is revealed before you’ve encountered it yourself? It isn’t! Still, in the case of the great French writer Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Happy Marriage, I can’t help but find myself on the side of the spoiler-phobic. In this novel’s first section, Ben Jelloun gives us a piercing but deeply gripping account of the dissolution of a marriage. (The translation from the French, by André Naffis-Sahely, is marvelously fluid.) Like Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, to which Ben Jelloun alludes a number of times in the book, The Happy Marriage is radically candid about the little moments of discord that can come to symbolize a relationship’s decay. But in The Happy Marriage’s second section, everything is reversed. No spoilers here, except to say that Ben Jelloun gives us a stark shift in perspective that compels us to second-guess everything we’ve already read. It’s an audacious move, but it pays off brilliantly. The excerpt below is from the beginning of the novel—it’s the moment when we realize that the novel’s title can’t be anything other than ironic.
—Mark Krotov

It was a gorgeous hand-embroidered blanket that had been crafted in Fez towards the end of the nineteenth century. It was a little worn and it hadn’t endured the ravages of time. One of the painter’s Moroccan friends, who was knowledgeable when it came to embroidered cloths, had offered it to the couple as their wedding present. It was so beautiful and precious he had wanted to have it framed and hang it as though it were a painting. Before doing that, he’d stretched it out as carefully as possible on a low-lying table that he hadn’t liked at all—neither the wood, nor its shape—but which was the sort of typical table one would find in most homes. Gracefully situated in the middle of the living room, it covered up what was an ugly piece of furniture, but has also made the room far more beautiful. The painter had done some research on embroidered cloths crafted in Fez during the previous century and had been surprised to learn that it had once belonged to the family of his maternal grandfather. It had been a part of Lalla Zineb’s trousseau. Lalla Zineb had been the daughter of Moulay Aly, a professor at the University of al-Karaouine. The cloth had become priceless in the painter’s eyes! Not only because it was beautiful and unique, but also because it was a part of his family heritage. Truth be told, it was the only wedding present they’d received that he truly liked. The others had been so unoriginal that he’d quickly forgotten all about them. That wasn’t the case with his wife, who scattered those presents all over their house, especially their bedroom, giving them pride of place: vases, decorative plates, sheets embroidered by little hands, synthetic wool blankets, coffee sets that imitated the English style but were almost certainly made in China, bouquets of plastic flowers made to last forever, and a whole host of other trifles whose only purpose was to sit on a shelf and serve as a reminder that the wedding had been a nice party, while one wisely waited until the dust wrapped them up in two thick layers of dirt.

On his return home one evening he’d discovered that the cloth was missing. His wife had tossed it into the laundry basket. The painter fetched it out, folded it carefully and put it in one of his closet’s drawers. He thought about the dainty hands that had spent weeks embroidering that little piece of cloth, about the man or woman who’d designed those flowers and picked the colors. The painter was very upset. To think that cloth had survived two World Wars, the French Protectorate in Morocco, the country’s subsequent independence, and had belonged to three or four different families before winding up in the window display of a sophisticated antique dealer so that one of his friends could buy it and offer it to them as a wedding present! In the face of all of that, it was difficult to interpret his wife’s gesture as anything other than crudeness, at best, or at worst, even ignorance. He had wanted to find her so he could speak to her about the importance he attached to those objects from the past. However, he had noticed that his wife hated lessons. She might even make some kind of disingenuous retort like: “But what is that old rag? My house isn’t some bazaar!” At first he thought he could forgive her, talk to her tenderly, explain himself, teach her how to admire a work of art, tell her that one could read an embroidery as though it were a poem, that one could decipher an old carpet just as one follows the footsteps of an ancient civilization, and so forth.

He’d withdrawn into his study and had asked himself why that whole affair over the cloth had so profoundly hurt his feelings. Up until that moment, their love had always been stronger than that. Some elements of his wife’s behavior had shocked him, but he’d been able to overcome them. But he couldn’t stomach this; it just wouldn’t do. It would be impossible to forgive her. What she had done was irreparable, and it was the first time he’d thought they could one day separate. The evening went by and the painter didn’t broach the subject with his wife at dinner. Later that night, he laughed at himself for how angry he’d been.

The Happy Marriage, by Tahar Ben Jelloun

On Sale January 5.