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Harraga, January 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Bloomsbury USA
January 2015
On Sale: January 13, 2015
Featuring: Chérifa; Lamia
288 pages
ISBN: 1620402246
EAN: 9781620402245
Kindle: B00OYTFLDO
Hardcover / e-Book
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Suspense
Harraga. The term means "to burn," and it refers to those
Algerians in exile, who burn their identity papers to seek
asylum in Europe. But for Boualem Sansal, whose novels are
banned in his own country, there is a kind of internal
exile
even for those who stay; and for no one is it worse than
for
the country's women. Lamia is thirty-five years old, a doctor. Having lost most
of her family, she is accustomed to living alone,
unmarried
and contentedly independent when a teenage girl, Chérifa,
arrives on her doorstep. Chérifa is pregnant by Lamia's
brother in exile—Lamia's first indication since he left
that
he is alive—and she'll surely be killed if she returns to
her parents. Lamia grudgingly offers her hospitality;
Chérifa ungratefully accepts it. But she is restless and
obstinate, and before long she runs away, out into the
hostile streets—leaving Lamia to track her, fearing for
the
life of the girl she has come, improbably, to love as
family. Boualem Sansal creates, in Lamia, an incredible narrator:
cultured, caustic, and compassionate, with an ironic
contempt for the government, she is utterly convincing.
With
his deceptively simple story, Sansal delivers a brave
indictment of fundamentalism that is also warm and
wonderfully humane.
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