Novel
Sherazade
Shérazade, 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts
Leïla Sebbar · 1982
Synopsis
Shérazade, 17 years old, dark-haired, curly-haired, green-eyed: this is how the police description portrays her. A daughter of Algerian immigrants, she has fled her family and lives in a Paris squat with other young people on the margins. She steals, takes part in burglaries, secretly writes poems and reads everything to do with Algeria. Around her revolve Pierrot, Krim, Driss and Julien, a pied-noir Arabist who notices her at the library and falls in love with her, and to whom she declares that she is not an odalisque.
Context
Stock published the novel in 1982; it opens a trilogy continued by Les Carnets de Shérazade and Le Fou de Shérazade, completed in 1991. It follows young people from Maghrebi families in the squats and streets of Paris. It was reissued by Bleu autour in 2010, and Dorothy S. Blair translated it into English, first for Quartet Books, in London, in 1991, then for Interlink Books, in the United States, in 2014.
Who it is for
A novel of about two hundred and fifty pages, in French, easy to approach, with many characters.
Prizes and reception
It is the book that established its author in Maghrebi literature in French, and the first part of her best-known trilogy.
Sources for this page 7
The pages consulted to check this page.