We will meet to discuss the book online on Sunday, October 26th at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET

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 and 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.

About the author & the translator:

Boualem Sansal was born in Algiers, Algeria, in 1949. Trained as an engineer with a doctorate in economics, he began writing novels at the age of 50 after retiring from his job as a high-ranking official in the Algerian government. The assassination of President Boudiaf in 1992 and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria inspired him to write about his country. Sansal writes in French, and his work has won top literary awards in France, among them the Prix du Premier Roman in 1999. Politicians, writers and activists have called for the release of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose arrest in Algeria in December 2024 is seen as the latest instance of the stifling of creative expression in the military-dominated North African country.

Frank Wynne is a literary translator. Born in Ireland, he  moved to France  in 1984. He began translating literature in the late 1990s, and in 2001 decided to devote himself to this full time. He has translated works by, among others, Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Ahmadou Kourouma, Boualem Sansal, Claude Lanzmann, Tómas Eloy Martínez and Almudena Grandes.  His work has earned him a number of awards, including the  Scott Moncrieff Prize  and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Vernon Subutex was shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2018.

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