The French-Algerian author on teenage fame, the parallels between her and Zinedine Zidane, and why she admires Bernardine Evaristo
Faïza Guène is the bestselling, award-winning French-Algerian author of six novels largely set among the Algerian community living in the outskirts of Paris. She shot to fame in 2004 at 19 with the publication of Kiffe kiffe demain (Just Like Tomorrow), which used street slang to capture the world of 15-year-old Doria, growing up on the ill-named Paradise estate. Her latest novel, Discretion, tells the story of the Taleb family over seven decades, and their journey from a small village in Algeria to the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers.
Why did you put the matriarch Yamina, whose French-born children are nourished and overwhelmed by a love that “overflows like the Mediterranean”, at the heart of your book?
There are a few memoirs, and studies by historians or sociologists, about immigrant Algerian workers in France. These [men] had a role to play, even if they were exploited, whereas the women stayed at home. So we never heard from them. It was important to me that a woman like that should be the central character of my story.
