β Scribed by Fawzia Zouari
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The first novel available to English readers by Fawzia Zouari, one of the most important North African authors writing today, begins with an emergency crewβs arrival at a Parisian apartment. Two emaciated young women, sisters, are brought out on stretchers. To the crowd of onlookers the womenβs condition is mystifying; for the two sisters, this is the inescapable end to a tragic series of events.
Inspired by an actual news story from the French headlines, I Die by This Country introduces us to NacΓ©ra and Amira. Casting her mind back in the midst of the opening pagesβ upheaval, NacΓ©ra pieces together her fragmentary knowledge of her parentsβ lives in rural French Algeria and their immigration to Paris in the years following Algeriaβs war for independence. Her memories of how both she and Amira struggled to find their place as children of immigrants reveals the enormous stress of social exclusion and identity conflicts facing immigrant youth. NacΓ©ra and her family yearn for acceptance, but the reader sees this dream becoming increasingly unattainable.
Zouariβs frank prose and penetrating storytelling deftly relates the multigenerational experience of Franco-Algerian immigration during the last quarter of the twentieth century. As France continues, like so many western countries, to struggle with questions regarding national identity, immigration, and its colonial past, the experiences depicted in this novel resonate more than ever.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
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