Fawzia Zouari Livres

The first novel available to English readers by Fawzia Zouari, one of the most important North African authors writing today, begins with an emergency crew's arrival at a Parisian apartment. Two emaciated young women, sisters, are brought out on stretchers. To the crowd of onlookers the women's 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 Nacera and Amira. Casting her mind back in the midst of the opening pages' upheaval, Nacera pieces together her fragmentary knowledge of her parents' lives in rural French Algeria and their immigration to Paris in the years following Algeria's 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. Nacera and her family yearn for acceptance, but the reader sees this dream becoming increasingly unattainable.Zouari's 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.

La narratrice évoque sa mère et, à travers elle, la vie des femmes bédouines de Tunisie. Elle relate comment celle-ci est parvenue à se libérer d'une longue tradition ancestrale particulièrement contraignante pour les femmes et décrit les bouleversements survenus avec la révolution de jasmin

« Du fil, du sang et des mots. Il n'en faut pas plus pour faire disparaître le corps d'une fille. » À la veille de partir à l'internat, Bagassa se plie une dernière fois aux exigences de sa mère. Aucune de ses sœurs aînées n'a fait d'études. Pourquoi suivre ce soudain élan de modernité auquel le pays est en proie ? Dans la Tunisie rurale des années 60, la place d'une femme est à la maison, sous l'autorité de sa mère toute-puissante. Mais le père a insisté. Ce sortilège ancestral, auquel la fillette se soumet, ce sera le dernier. Demain, elle coupera le fil. Demain, elle sera libre. La première à emprunter le chemin de l'émancipation...