Book Details
Format
Paperback
Pages
368
Language
English
Published
Jun 9, 2026
Publisher
Penguin Books
ISBN-10
0143139150
ISBN-13
9780143139157
Description
A sensual and provocative coming-of-age novel about a young Arab woman on a quest for sexual and political freedom, set against the backdrop of the past forty years--from one of the most fearless and captivating voices in world literature
If your house was burning down, what would you take with you?
I’d take the fire.
--Jean Cocteau
Mia Belhaj yearns to be free. A child of Morocco in the politically and socially turbulent 1980s, she flees her family and her homeland to seek her own place in the world. Years later, she finds it as a famous author, only for a bout with a virus to jeopardize her memory and the novel she wants to write about her past. When she’s advised to retrace her history to reclaim her present, Mia journeys around the world in search of herself, from Casablanca to Paris to New York, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, and finally back to her grandparents’ farm in Morocco, where her story first began. Acclaimed author Leila Slimani brings her own past to life in this provocative, beautifully written family fresco carried by vigorous poetry and a breath of great power.
If your house was burning down, what would you take with you?
I’d take the fire.
--Jean Cocteau
Mia Belhaj yearns to be free. A child of Morocco in the politically and socially turbulent 1980s, she flees her family and her homeland to seek her own place in the world. Years later, she finds it as a famous author, only for a bout with a virus to jeopardize her memory and the novel she wants to write about her past. When she’s advised to retrace her history to reclaim her present, Mia journeys around the world in search of herself, from Casablanca to Paris to New York, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, and finally back to her grandparents’ farm in Morocco, where her story first began. Acclaimed author Leila Slimani brings her own past to life in this provocative, beautifully written family fresco carried by vigorous poetry and a breath of great power.