Living in Your Light

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A story in in praise of a woman, a fighter, a survivor from the award-winning French-Moroccan novelist known for humanizing North Africa's otherwise marginalized characters-prostitutes and thieves, trans and gay people in a world where being LGBTQ+ can be a dangerous act. Shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2022. A story in in praise of a woman, a fighter, a survivor from the award-winning French-Moroccan novelist known for humanizing North Africa's otherwise marginalized characters-prostitutes and thieves, trans and gay people in a world where being LGBTQ+ can be a dangerous act. Shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2022. Three moments in the life of Malika, a Moroccan countrywoman. From 1954 to 1999. From French colonization to the death of King Hassan II. It is her voice we hear in Abdellah Taia's stunning new novel, translated by Emma Ramadan, who won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Taia's last novel, A Country for Dying. Malika's first husband was sent by the French to fight in Indochina. In the 1960s, in Rabat, she does everything possible to prevent her daughter Khadija from becoming a maid in a rich French woman's villa. The day before the death of Hassan II, a young homosexual thief, Ja far, enters her home and wants to kill her. Malika recounts with rage her strategies to escape the injustices of History. To survive. To have a little space of her own. Malika is Taia's mother- M'Barka Allali Taia (1930-2010). This book is dedicated to her.

Reviews

"Taaswonderfully ferocious and contradictory heroine Malika will make you weep and quail by turn. Her testament is a powerful antidote to the sentimentality and exoticism thatso often distorts depictions of Arab womanhood."Zo Heller,author of Everything You Know

Everything about Living in Your Light is unexpected. A Moroccan woman of the disappointed independence generation speaks of her struggle to keep power over her life, of what she knows of the suffering of the poor, and of women who are autonomous in a land where colonialism never went away. A poetic and fierce and original work.Darryl Pinckney

Author Bio

Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1973, ABDELLAH TA A has written many novels, including Salvation Army, which he also made into an award-winning film, Infidels (Seven Stories 2016), translated by Alison Strayer, and A Country for Dying (Seven Stories, 2020), which was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Emma Ramadan's translation. He lives in Paris. EMMA RAMADAN is an educator and literary translator from French. She was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Abdellah Taia's A Country for Dying, and has also received the Albertine Prize, two NEA Fellowships, and a Fulbright. Her other translations include Anne Garreta's Sphinx, Kamel Daoud's Zabor, or the Psalms, Kaoutar Harchi's As We Exist, Marguerite Duras's The Easy Life, and Barbara Molinard's Panics.