Shipping Weight:
.142|Dimensions:
5.5 x .37 x 8.16 inches
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Description
An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature"
WINNER OF THE 2021 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE
Paris, Summer 2010.
Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her. Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona. Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira's first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira.
Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Taïa writes, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future."
About the Author
Kaoutar Harchi was born in Strasbourg, France, and was a visiting professor at New York University in 2019. She is a sociologist whose work focuses on political relations between speciesism, racism, and sexism in postindustrial societies. As We Exist is her first book to appear in English.
Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying, Kamel Daoud’s Zabor, or The Psalms, and Barbara Molinard’s Panics.
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