Harraga
A Novel
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sansal's (The German Mujahid) latest novel is a fiercely critical indictment of Islamic fundamentalism and a corrupt Algerian government. According to Sansal, harraga means "path burner" in Arabic and is the name given to hopeful emigrants who burn bridges and identification papers to seek better lives overseas. Lamia, a pediatrician and "confirmed spinster" at 35, is a vocal critic of the strictures of Islam and the prevailing political regime. One day, she opens the door of her rickety old house in Rampe Val e to Ch rifa, an unmarried, pregnant, charismatic teen with perfume that penetrates the air like radiation. Both are path burners of a different kind, with their open defiance of religious and cultural norms. Ch rifa claims to know Lamia's missing harraga brother, Sofiane, and the two women strike up a warm yet precarious friendship. Simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking, Sansal expertly describes the crushing weight of social and religious strictures on Algeria's women.