Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Summary and Reviews of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

by Faïza Guène
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Paperback:
  • Jul 2006, 192 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Doria, 15, is growing up in the rough Paris immigrant public housing projects. She sets her dreams against the grim daily struggle of her life: "It's like a film script. . . . trouble is, our scriptwriter's got no talent. And he's never heard of happily ever after."

The Paradise projects are only a few metro stops from Paris, but here it's a whole different kind of France. Doria's father, the Beard, has headed back to their hometown in Morocco, leaving her and her mom to cope with their mektoub—their destiny—alone. They have a little help-- from a social worker sent by the city, a psychiatrist sent by the school, and a thug friend who recites Rimbaud.

It seems like fate’s dealt them an impossible hand, but Doria might still make a new life. She'll prove the projects aren't only about rap, soccer, and religious tension. She’ll take the Arabic word kif-kif (same old, same old) and mix it up with the French verb kiffer (to really like something). Now she has a whole new motto: Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The strength of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (pronounced keef) is the narrator's voice. Doria, a bubbling pot of contradicting teenage emotions is a wickedly funny observer of her environment, who doesn't believe in leaving things unsaid and has made a moral code for herself from TV programs, "TV today is like the poor person's Koran". Through short, diary-like chapters she brings us up close and personal with her life and the very real problems of being a poor immigrant living in an effective ghetto, surrounded by poverty, bigotry, racism and misogyny - so we can get some sense of how overwhelming it is to survive in such an environment, let alone to dream of finding a better life...continued

Full Review (765 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



22-year-old Faïza Guène (pronounced Fie-ee-za Gen - first syllable rhymes with pie) attends the University of St. Denis where she is a sociology major, and has just completed her first short film.  The child of Algerian immigrants, she was born in France and grew up in the public housing projects of Pantin, a suburb North-East of Paris.  For several years before going to university she was part of a publicly financed neighborhood film project writing scripts for TV.  She started writing Kiffe Kiffe when she was about seventeen, writing in longhand in cafes and on her parents' bed in their two-bed apartment that she shares with her parents and two siblings.  She describes her mother as "a ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, try these:

We have 9 read-alikes for Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Faïza Guène
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Devil Finds Work
by James Baldwin
A book-length essay on racism in American films, by "the best essayist in this country" (The New York Times Book Review).
Book Jacket
The River Knows Your Name
by Kelly Mustian
A haunting Southern novel about memory and love, from the author of The Girls in the Stilt House.
Book Jacket
Real Americans
by Rachel Khong
From the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, a novel exploring family, identity, and the shaping of destiny.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

Who Said...

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..