Fazia Guene’s France of the ‘almost French’, not Sarkozy’s

First — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:43:10 +0000

In 2004, 19-year-old author Faiza Guene became the voice of immigrant French youth with her novel, Kiffe Kiffe Demain. A year later her Paris housing estate where erupted in the notorious riots, beamed around the world – but this hasn’t stopped her finishing her third novel; neither has she moved.

The daughter of Algerian parents she refers to herself as being discovered by ‘accident’ and despite selling 300,000 copies of her first novel in her France claims to be shunned by the French literary elite. Neither she complains, does fame make her immune from the usual racism a young person of North African origin can expect in today’s France.

Her second novel, translated into English as Dreams from the Endz, is set against the aftermath of the riots and follows the life of an Algerian-born ‘almost French’ 24-year-old woman, struggling to obtain her French citizenship.

FIRST ®- A Jamaican Magazine | Peter Dean Rickards » 93 seine-saint-denis

Fazia Guene’s France of the ‘almost French’, not Sarkozy’s