Who is Faïza Guène?
This blog post was written by Antoine Marlio-Marlette, a young student who has come to the French Book Office in London to discover how we work to develop Franco-British literary interaction.
Faïza Guène is an author and a filmmaker.
Faïza Guène is going to be at Edinburgh International Book Festival on the 14th of August 2016. She is an Algerian writer and filmmaker born in France, who writes about both her countries and their dreams, their political realities, their multicultural situations.
Born in 1985, Faïza is the child of Algerian immigrants and lived during her childhood in a council house in Pantin, near Paris. She started writing when she was 19 to talk about the lives of young people in the French suburbs. In 2011, she was selected by UNESCO as one of fifteen artists under 35 years to be awarded the title of ''Young Artists for Intercultural Dialogue between Arab and Western Worlds''. In 2004 she directed and wrote the script of her short film named Nothing But Words. She continued writing and published books such as Just like tomorrow and Some dream for fools.
Here are a few extracts from the French version of Just Like Tomorrow:
'En sortant du bahut, j'ai croisé Hamoudi. Il m'a proposé de m'embarquer pour me déposer au quartier. J'étais fière alors j'en ai profité pour flamber un peu, pour que toutes ces tronches de cake au bahut me voient partir avec la doublure d'Antonio Banderas dans Zorro, mais en plus balafré. En fait, personne n'a vu. c'est pas grave.'
'Pour les mauvaises nouvelles, il faut s’inspirer de la télé. Du courage et du tact de Gaby dans Sunset Beach quand elle annonce à son con de mari qu’elle l’a trompé avec son propre frère. En plus, il était prêtre le frère. Encore pire. Alors à côté de ça, annoncer au père de Youssef que son gosse est en prison jusqu’au printemps prochain, c’est du gâteau.'
And here are two of her books:
Men don't cry
Men don't cry is the most recent book written by Faïza in French, translated in English by Sarah Ardizonne and published in the United States by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation. It will be on the market by the end of the year.
Plot: Born in the French city of Nice, from algerian parents, Mourad would like to forge his destiny.
His worst nightmare: to become an old overweight boy with grey hair, fed by his mum from fried oil. In order to escape that, he would have to abandon a heavy family heritage.
However, is it really by distancing a part of ourself from our ideas that we become fully ourselves?
(French cover of the book published by Fayard)
Just like tomorrow
Just Like Tomorrow is the first author's novel published in 2004 by Hachette Littérature, in the French version. It was later translated by Sarah Ardizzone and published in 2006 by Definitions (Random House Children's Publishers UK). In this novel, Guène tries to show the lives of young people in urban environment...
Plot: Fifteen-year-old Doria isn't in a good place. Or to be precise: she's in the sadly misnamed Paradise Estate on the outskirts of Paris. Her father has gone off back Morocco to find a wife who can give him a boy, and her illiterate, non French-speaking mother is having to fend for herself with a cleaning job in a grim motel. What's more, her favourite soap star has turned out to be gay and it looks like the only school that is going to accept Doria is the one for future hairdressers. Still, it could be worse: Doria could be like Samra, the girl in the flat above, whose father doesn't let her out, or Youssef who has been banged up for a year for dealing in drugs and stolen cars. At least Hamoudi - twenty-eight and the coolest guy on the estate - is her friend. And at least she gets a free weekly session with psychologist Mrs Burland, who is about the only person who listens, even if she doesn't quite understand...In this fabulous first novel, Faiza Guene has created an unforgettable voice. Doria is both clued up and innocent, acutely aware of what's in store for her and powerless to change it. She is funny, clever and tragically trapped. But in the end, her dogged determination not to be down-trodden and humiliated wins through and it looks like things can only get better.