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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > Harraga

Harraga

In a crumbling colonial mansion besieged by slums in the old quarter of Algiers, Lamia lives a life of self-imposed isolation, communing only with her ghosts by night, working as a paediatrician by day. Her family are dead but for her beloved brother Sofiane, who has become a harraga – one of those who risk their lives attempting to flee the country for a better life elsewhere.

Lamia’s tranquil, ordered existence is turned upside-down when a sixteen-year-old stranger knocks on her door in the middle of the night. Pregnant, unmarried and dressed like an X-Factor contestant, Chérifa is talkative, innocent, and utterly unafraid. Lamia takes her in only because she has been sent by Sofiane. Chérifa enters the house like a whirlwind, and leaves a trail of destruction in her wake. Lamia must try to teach her, to protect her against a world where a woman who is not meek, subservient and married is an affront, where a girl who is pregnant can be killed to spare her family’s honour.

By turns funny and lyrical, luminous and sardonic, Harraga, by the controversial author of An Unfinished Business, is the devastating story of two very different women who become friends and allies in a patriarchal world.

Author

Boualem Sansal

Boualem Sansal

Books

Harraga

Boualem Sansal is the author of six novels. His first novel Le Serment des Barbares (The Barbarians’ Oath) won the 1999 Prix du Premier Roman. In 2003 he was dismissed from his government job for criticising the Algerian government, and since 2006 his books have been banned in his own country. Today he is considered not only one of Algeria’s most important writers, but also a literary figure of international stature. Le village de l’allemand (also translated into English by Frank Wynne as An Unfinished Business) won France’s Grand Prix RTL LIRE 2008 and Belgium’s Grand Prix de la Francophonie 2008. In 2011 he was awarded the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize and in 2012 the Prix du Roman Arabe, later withdrawn, despite protests from the jury, following a visit to Israel to speak at the Jerusalem Writers Festival. He lives in Boumerdès, near Algiers.

Translator

Frank Wynne

Frank Wynne

Books

Allah is Not Obliged

Purgatory

Harraga

The Impostor

The Patagonian Hare

Seven Ways to Kill a Cat

Born in Sligo, Ireland, in 1962, Frank Wynne has worked in journalism and as a magazine publisher. His translations have been published by Weidenfeld, Fourth Estate, Penguin and Heinemann.

Published by

Bloomsbury, 2014
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In a crumbling colonial mansion besieged by slums in the old quarter of Algiers, Lamia lives a life of self-imposed isolation, communing only with her ghosts by night, working as a paediatrician by day. Her family are dead but for her beloved brother Sofiane, who has become a harraga – one of those who risk their lives attempting to flee the country for a better life elsewhere.

Lamia’s tranquil, ordered existence is turned upside-down when a sixteen-year-old stranger knocks on her door in the middle of the night. Pregnant, unmarried and dressed like an X-Factor contestant, Chérifa is talkative, innocent, and utterly unafraid. Lamia takes her in only because she has been sent by Sofiane. Chérifa enters the house like a whirlwind, and leaves a trail of destruction in her wake. Lamia must try to teach her, to protect her against a world where a woman who is not meek, subservient and married is an affront, where a girl who is pregnant can be killed to spare her family’s honour.

By turns funny and lyrical, luminous and sardonic, Harraga, by the controversial author of An Unfinished Business, is the devastating story of two very different women who become friends and allies in a patriarchal world.

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