Almost a year ago I attended " Literature and Freedom : Writers in Conversation ", a discussion hosted by Tate Modern which presented among the others Tahar Ben Jelloun . Now I wish I took more notes during that discussion, but this afternoon I found one - I'd rather write it here before losing even that piece of paper: Behind every work of fiction lies a tragedy. It's probably something you may easily believe reading "This blinding absence of light", which definitely impressed me this Spring, and I faced like a long work of poetry rather than a novel. Here's a review from The Guardian .