Moroccan Author Hicham Lasri Returns with a Provocative New Novel, “Cloud Cowboys”

Lasri delivers a powerful Arabo-futurist fable where family drama unfolds against a collapsing world.

Fez– In his latest literary work, Moroccan filmmaker and writer Hicham Lasri launches readers into a world where water is a memory, tenderness is a luxury, and hope is the last surviving resource.

“Cloud Cowboys”, Lasri’s newest novel, marks a bold return to the literary scene. It’s not just a story, it’s a cinematic, Arabo-futuristic vision of a planet on its last breath.

Somewhere between dystopian myth and surreal science fiction, the book unfolds like a philosophical fever dream, where post-apocalyptic storytelling meets psychological drama.

At the center of the novel is the Vallenari family; the last remaining “Cloud Cowboys” drifting across the scorched remains of Earth aboard the Beatle, a massive machine engineered to harvest rain.

Their fragile existence is shaken when a contaminated cloud crashes nearby, releasing a mysterious and deadly toxin. What follows is a descent into isolation, memory, grief, and quietly simmering conflict.

Lasri doesn’t just build a world, he fractures it from the inside out. Through deeply introspective dialogue and poetic nihilism, “Cloud Cowboys” paints a haunting picture of life after ecological collapse.

The atmosphere is heavy with silences, passive aggression, and that peculiar emotional fatigue that Lasri captures so well in all his work.

The characters, especially siblings Sami and Nora Vallenari, carry the story’s emotional weight. They are raw, flawed, human, trapped in a suspended family crisis as much as in the physical wreckage of the planet.

Sami, fragile and drifting somewhere between philosophical detachment and childlike retreat, tries to hold on to hope.

Nora, pragmatic and hardened by their circumstances, shoulders responsibility with a cold fire.

Their strained relationship mirrors the desolate world they inhabit, a world shaped by two brutal Water Wars and the fleeting illusion of peace known as the “Cloud Truce.”

What gives “Cloud Cowboys” its edge is Lasri’s unmistakable voice: chaotic, lyrical, darkly humorous, and unafraid of emotional messiness.

His writing dips into absurdity but always comes back with meaning. There are no neat arcs or tidy resolutions here, just the lingering tension of survival and the absurd theatre of modern existence pushed to its limits.

This is not Lasri’s first foray into speculative fiction, but “Cloud Cowboys” reads like his most mature and urgent work to date.

It refuses simplicity. It plays with genre while dissecting the emotional architecture of trauma, loss, and what it means to keep moving when nothing makes sense anymore.

Although “Cloud Cowboys” is being released in episodes exclusively through Le360, the novel is already generating buzz for its bold storytelling and emotional depth.

It’s a rare kind of book, both fantastical and deeply grounded, political and personal, futuristic and painfully familiar.

For readers ready to venture into a scorched landscape where hope is measured in grams per square meter and family ties are as unstable as the clouds above, Lasri’s new novel promises a wild and unforgettable ride.