Dizzier Than Gillespie

Dizzier Than Gillespie is a bold, lyrical feminist novel where travel, politics, friendship, and a touch of magic collide in the heat and music of Tunisia.

Delilah-an American poet and professor with a chronic case of wanderlust, arrives in Tunis expecting adventure, not transformation. What she discovers instead is a city that unsettles and reawakens her: souks thick with spice and jasmine, hammams filled with women’s voices, seaside streets ruled by men in cafés-and the rule-breaking thrill of imagining something different. At her side is Melina, a sharp-tongued, fiercely independent Tunisian woman who becomes Delilah’s guide, ally, and co-conspirator.

And then there is Saida Manoubia.

A legendary thirteenth-century folk saint, Saida appears-sometimes invisible, sometimes unmistakable-as Delilah’s irreverent spiritual companion. Worldly, funny, and defiantly female, Saida bends time, nudges events, and insists on joy, music, and resistance. With jazz rhythms echoing through the book-especially the dizzying syncopation of “A Night in Tunisia”-the boundary between the sacred and the everyday dissolves.

As Delilah’s circle of women grows, so does their audacity. They reclaim public space, occupy cafés, challenge patriarchal assumptions, and form The Sisters of Saida Manoubia, a movement as playful as it is political. Against a backdrop of rising regional tensions and the Gulf War, the novel deftly intertwines the personal and the global-exploring exile, imperialism, media distortion, identity, and the cost of silence-without ever losing its wit or warmth.

By turns funny, sensual, angry, and tender, Dizzier Than Gillespie is a love letter to women who refuse to behave, saints who refuse to stay buried, and lives lived off-beat-improvised, unruly, and dazzlingly alive.

Perfect for readers of feminist fiction, cross-cultural literary novels, and stories where magic, music, and revolt share the same breath.

“Dizzier Than Gillespie starts right out with voices of this world and not quite of this world. The writing shimmers with precision and keen observations in what could be taken for a record of an extended stay in North Africa, but actually becomes a vision of a richer world full of simple and complex beauties, constructed mainly by women gathered across time and geography, assembled from the commonest day by day but sometimes necessarily traveling in mind and body to the places of war. Like a dream but too vivid, too tactile, too full of flavor.”

—Edward Mast, Playwright, Author of The Million Bells of Ocean.

“In her debut novel, Dizzier than Gillespie, poet Sibyl serves up a rich Middle Eastern feast, dizzying in its sweep of an ancient culture and its history, as seen through the eyes of Delilah, an American writer living in Tunis where she teaches as a visiting professor at a local Tunisian university on the eve of the First Gulf War. More than its vivid evocations of life in Tunis, James’ tale centers on her friendships, the sisterhood she forms with her Tunis guide, Melina, and with Laura, an American poet and UN staffer stationed in Tunis. As a feminist trio, the uppity women challenge the male-dominated world of Tunisia in a small but potent act of rebellion by taking tables in male-only cafes. They draw stares of distain from the men, looks of curious admiration from a group of passing girls.. Then there’s Saida, whose identity I won’t divulge here, but who adds sparkle and spice to Delilah’s life, especially during the harrowing events leading up to the war. Dizzier than Gillespie crackles with verbal panache. It’s often funny, more often wise, reflecting a world view that comes hard-earned from lived experience. In Delilah, James has created a character who comes to terms with the nomadic life, who embraces both its uncertainties and its rewards, and who comes to understand that the home she seeks is wherever she finds herself in the world.”

—Ed Harkness, Author of Creek Water: New & Selected Poems

“Dizzier Than Gillespie, is the story of a farm girl from Kansas, named Delilah, now in her forties, a university lecturer, who is nudged by a 13th-century Sufi saint, named Saida Manoubia to travel to Tunisia. Delilah frequently “wonders what tale she has fallen into.” James utilizes the Arab storytelling tradition of a Thousand and One Nights to tell the tale of an American traveler. Delilah navigates her way through Tunisia, despite the confusing intertwining of the French colonial tradition with its Arabic roots. Like “a sleight of hand,” the Sufi saint, Saida Manoubia appears when she is most confused and offers advice as well as humorous banter. But her other guide is Melina, a secular Tunisian. Delilah adjusts to the different rhythm and melody of life in Tunis, like leisurely lunches of fresh fish with an eclectic circle of expatriate friends, or the tolerant Tunisian shopkeepers who tell her “We all hate war” when the U.S. starts carpet-bombing Baghdad in 1991 during Desert Storm. When Delilah hears shots in her neighborhood, she discovers that the assassination of PLO leaders in a nearby safe house is not big enough for the American mainstream news. Sibyl James creates engaging characters, in a landscape poetically described. But she also shows how cultural ambiguities and the complexity of a culture cannot be understood easily from the American news.”

—Gretchen McCullough, author of The Wondrous Springs of Balmorhea