SOURCE: Fleurant, Kenneth. Review of Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. French Review 69, no. 6 (May 1996): 1054-55.

In the following review, Fleurant praises Ben Jelloun's focus on complex gender relations in Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier, noting that Ben Jelloun is “a master of short fiction.”

Although best known for his novels and poetry, Ben Jelloun is a master of short fiction. At first glance, Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier looks like an anthology. It is comprised of twenty-one short stories, twelve of which have been previously published since 1973. However, the obvious care the author and his editors have taken in organizing the stories around a unifying theme gives this text a feeling of wholeness and continuity. These are stories about love, and, taken together, they reveal the complexity of affective relations which frequently end in solitude and incomprehension.

Ben...