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Interview with Leila Slimani
May 13, 20216:00 p.m.
ONLINE
Casa Árabe’s YouTube channel.
6:00 p.m.
In French, with Spanish subtitles.
The Moroccan author has just had “In the Country of Others” published in
Spanish (as “El país de los otros,” Cabaret Voltaire). On Thursday, May
13, you can watch the interview we held with her when she visited Casa
Árabe.
During her brief stay at our institution, Slimani signed seven copies of her book. If you would like to have one of them, reserve it or purchase it now at our Balqís bookstore.
Leila Slimani was born in Rabat in 1981, to a Moroccan father and French-Algerian mother. After graduating from the French Lycée in Rabat, she moved to Paris to enroll at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and then at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, where she majored in media studies. After working as a journalist for several years at L’Express and Jeune Afrique, she decided to devote herself to literature on a full-time basis. Her first novel, The Ogre’s Garden (2014), in which she deals with the issue of female sex addiction, was given great critical acclaim. Lullaby / The Perfect Nanny, her second novel, consolidated Slimani’s literary career when it won the Prix Goncourt for 2016. In 2017, her compelling essay Sex and Lies was published in France.
She is currently France’s representative on the International Organization of the Francophonie, a regular contributor to the newspaper Le Monde and a committed activities in the fields of human rights and sexual freedom.
About “In the Country of Others”
In 1944, Mathilde, a young woman from Alsace, falls in love with Amin Belhach, a Moroccan fighter in the French army during World War Two. After Liberation is achieved, the couple travels to Morocco and settles in Meknes, a city in the French Protectorate zone with a significant presence of soldiers and colonial settlers. As he tries to make improvements to a farm inherited from his father on rocky, infertile land, she soon feels overwhelmed by the harsh environment of Morocco. Lonely and isolated in the countryside with her husband and two children, she endures mistrust from others as a foreigner and a lack of economic resources. Will this couple’s self-sacrificing work bear its fruits? The ten years in which the novel transpires coincide with the inevitable rise in tensions and violence that lead to Morocco’s independence in 1956.
All of the novel’s characters live within a “country of others”: colonial settlers, the native population, soldiers, farmers and exiles. Women, above all else, live in a country of men and must constantly fight for their emancipation.
This is the first volume in a trilogy that begins in the 1950s, following the life stories of characters inspired by Leila Slimani’s family and the change in a country, Morocco, which overcame its colonial period to rise up as an independent nation.
Leila Slimani was born in Rabat in 1981, to a Moroccan father and French-Algerian mother. After graduating from the French Lycée in Rabat, she moved to Paris to enroll at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and then at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, where she majored in media studies. After working as a journalist for several years at L’Express and Jeune Afrique, she decided to devote herself to literature on a full-time basis. Her first novel, The Ogre’s Garden (2014), in which she deals with the issue of female sex addiction, was given great critical acclaim. Lullaby / The Perfect Nanny, her second novel, consolidated Slimani’s literary career when it won the Prix Goncourt for 2016. In 2017, her compelling essay Sex and Lies was published in France.
She is currently France’s representative on the International Organization of the Francophonie, a regular contributor to the newspaper Le Monde and a committed activities in the fields of human rights and sexual freedom.
About “In the Country of Others”
In 1944, Mathilde, a young woman from Alsace, falls in love with Amin Belhach, a Moroccan fighter in the French army during World War Two. After Liberation is achieved, the couple travels to Morocco and settles in Meknes, a city in the French Protectorate zone with a significant presence of soldiers and colonial settlers. As he tries to make improvements to a farm inherited from his father on rocky, infertile land, she soon feels overwhelmed by the harsh environment of Morocco. Lonely and isolated in the countryside with her husband and two children, she endures mistrust from others as a foreigner and a lack of economic resources. Will this couple’s self-sacrificing work bear its fruits? The ten years in which the novel transpires coincide with the inevitable rise in tensions and violence that lead to Morocco’s independence in 1956.
All of the novel’s characters live within a “country of others”: colonial settlers, the native population, soldiers, farmers and exiles. Women, above all else, live in a country of men and must constantly fight for their emancipation.
This is the first volume in a trilogy that begins in the 1950s, following the life stories of characters inspired by Leila Slimani’s family and the change in a country, Morocco, which overcame its colonial period to rise up as an independent nation.