Harraga

Harraga

Lamia is thirty-five years old, 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.