Translated from French by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott.

Farida, a young woman in Tunis, is passionate about reading and loves the French language. But she is compelled to marry Kamel, a brute of a man, who drinks, keeps mistresses, and beats her when she talks back. But she is defiant, and takes comfort from her secret reading. The country is a French colony and male-dominated. Finally after ten years she is granted a divorce by the courts and lives with her son Tewfiq. A smoking, independent-minded divorcee, she sees the country attain its freedom from the French and its arrival into modern times; the growth of her son into a young public servant; and her granddaughter Leila mature into an independent, educated young woman. This is a novel of modern Tunisia told through the lives of its women.

Monia Mazigh was born and raised in Tunisia and immigrated to Canada in 1991. Mazigh was catapulted onto the public stage in 2002 when her husband, Maher Arar, was deported to Syria where he was tortured and held without charge. She campaigned tirelessly for his release. Mazigh holds a Ph.D. in finance from McGill University. She has published a memoir, Hope and Despair, and her novel Miroirs et mirages was published in the original French in 2011 and was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award.

Monia Mazigh's profile page

Phyllis Aronoff, a Montrealer born and bred, translates from French to English, solo or with co-translator Howard Scott. She has translated fiction, poetry, memoirs, and works in the humanities by authors from Québec and France. Among her recent translations are Message Sticks / Tshissinuatshitakana, poems by Innu writer Joséphine Bacon, and novels (co-translated with Howard Scott) by Rima Elkouri and Edem Awumey. Her translations have won several prizes, including the Jewish Book Award for Fiction and, with Howard Scott, the Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation. Phyllis is a past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and has represented translators on the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada.

Phyllis Aronoff's profile page

Howard Scott is a Montreal literary translator who works with fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His translations include works by Madeleine Gagnon, science-fiction writer Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Canada’s Poet Laureate, Michel Pleau. Scott received the Governor General’s Literary Award for his translation of Louky Bersianik’s The Euguelion. The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701, by Gilles Havard, which he co-translated with Phyllis Aronoff, won the Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Award. A Slight Case of Fatigue, by Stéphane Bourguignon, another co-translation with Phyllis Aronoff, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Howard Scott is a past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada.

Howard Scott's profile page

"Intimate in style, each chapter bringing out the inner voice of a character, this novel takes us into a bubble containing the lives of three generations of Tunisians. A series of characters appear, representing the evolution of this land of jasmines and the real but difficult emancipation of its women." --Yvan Cliche, Nuit Blanche Magazine

"Monia Mazigh's fluid, elegant writing holds our attention throughout the individual and collective journeys it presents and the social and political transformations that have taken place in Tunisia and Canada." --Jury of the Ottawa Book Award, French Fiction, 2021