An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature. Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her. Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona.
Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future. He exposes how colonization has shaped sexual desire, expression, and exploitation, and leaves us with a memorable, powerful work.
The author, who grew up in Morocco and lives in France, excels when contrasting the dreams of two of his three main characters, all of whom are North African prostitutes, with the grimness of demimonde Paris. It jars with the stories of Zahira and Aziz, owing to its brevity and altogether different time and place. Zahira, a year-old prostitute, is haunted by memories of her father's suicide in Morocco when she was a child, and of Allal, a possessive Moroccan who loved her decades earlier.
Enlisted by the French to service soldiers in s Indochina, Zineb is left adrift between the family she's left behind and a love she can only sell. But Zahira is not free, and Allal has not forgotten her; he is coming now to Paris, planning to kill her. In the churning gears of this compact, deeply moving novel, crises of identity prove more solvable than those of the heart. With terse, biting prose beautifully translated from French by Emma Ramadan, it is a startlingly topical and succinct examination of race, relocation, isolation, and identity.
This is a work that concerns itself with intimacy, with desire, and with identityβand which finds multiple permutations of each to discuss. Throw in a plot that grapples with colonialism and generational trauma and you have a complex, thoughtful novel. Lyrical and impassioned. Cut off from their own countries yet marginalised by their new home, his characters live fragmented lives that often play out at night-time or in dark, shadowy spaces. Themes such as gender, sexuality, religion and identity are explored in some detail as well, making this brief work of fiction β published by Seven Stories Press in a seamless translation by Emma Ramadan β something deeply profound and complex.
