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A Novel
by Boualem Sansal, Frank Wynne (translator)
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.
"Simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking, Sansal expertly describes the crushing weight of social and religious strictures on Algeria's women." - Publishers Weekly
"Sansal's richly drawn characters and the places where he embeds them will color readers' moods long after we leave their passageways." - Kirkus
"...the failings of the novel are secondary to the importance of writers in countries with poor human rights records speaking out. The 70 journalists murdered by Algerian Islamists in the Nineties would applaud Sansal. Frank Wynne's translation is generally excellent, converting the French to a convincing monologue complete with clichés." - The Independent, UK
This information about Harraga was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Boualem Sansal was born in 1949 in Algeria. Once a government official, he lost his post over criticism of Islamist policies. His first novel, published when he was fifty years old, won the Best First Novel Prize in France, and Sansal was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2011. He has previously been nominated for the Nobel Prize. Sansal's books have been translated into fifteen languages, but The German Mujahid was his first to be translated into English, also by Frank Wynne (published in the UK as An Unfinished Business). He has called Harraga his best novel. Sansal's writings are banned in Algeria, where he continues to live with his family.
Frank Wynne's many translations have won the IMPAC, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize. He lives in London.
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