Lyrical and impassioned.
In this newly translated work of fiction, the Paris-based Moroccan writer and filmmaker looks at sexuality, desire, and identity in a post-colonial world.
Zahira is a Moroccan woman living in Paris. She gives her friend Aziz, an émigré from Algeria, the new name Zannouba on the evening before the young woman’s gender affirmation surgery. Both are prostitutes. Zahira offers herself to the Muslim immigrants of Paris. Zannouba cultivates a wealthier clientele. Both women dream of a future that is very different from their present, and their accounts are intertwined with those of the men and women they meet. The people depicted here are not so much united by story—there isn’t much in the way of story—as by themes. The French occupations of North African and Southeast Asia cast a shadow over their lives, from the undocumented laborers Zahira takes as customers to another Moroccan prostitute attached to a French army unit in 1950s Saigon. Class and race are also explored here. A man who fell in love with Zahira when she was a girl is enraged to discover that she is not the pure creature he imagined, and his anger is fueled, in part, by the fact that her mother rejected his offer of marriage because he’s Black. When Zannouba first arrives in Paris, she makes her way by presenting herself in the way French men want to see her: “I prostituted myself dressed as a moderately savage Arab boy from over there, Algeria. The clients liked that.” In her private life, she simultaneously emulates and disdains the wealthy, educated men in her orbit. Identity is presented as a fluid concept for the characters. Upon discovering that surgery is not the transformation she hoped it would be, Zannouba loses herself in a surreal reverie about the actress Isabelle Adjani. Another actress—the classic Bollywood star Nargis—is an aspirational figure for the Moroccan woman stranded in Vietnam. None of these characters emerges as a fully formed person, and they all speak with the same fervent, poetic voice. But in these vignettes and monologues, Taïa offers American readers glimpses of lives few of us are likely to see outside of this book.
Lyrical and impassioned.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60980-990-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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