What does a French, Muslim teenager write about in her best-selling first book?
Voice of the suburbs Faïza Guène, a Muslim teenager from a Paris housing estate, tells Jason Burke how a life struggling with two cultures translated into a surprise bestselling novel
Sunday April 23, 2006
The Observer
The Porte de la Villette, where I am to meet Faïza Guène, is not a picture-postcard part of Paris. It is a no-man's-land, a zone between the wealthy, beautifully preserved city itself and the poor, concrete suburbs. The 'porte', once a gateway through the ramparts of Paris, is now a junction on the busy beltway road of the Périphérique. There is a metro station, a forlorn, rain-lashed shopping centre, a railway bridge and a row of wet restaurants and bars.
And there is Café Docks, where Guène or, rather, her literary agent, has told me that we will meet. The cafe turns out to be another no-man's-land, though cultural rather than physical. It's an American-themed bar with screens showing MTV with French subtitles, assorted Broadway memorabilia and a menu featuring hamburgers, nachos, pizza and entrecôte-frites. Café Docks is empty save for a few teenagers sharing after-school coffees and a packet of cigarettes.
Guène is late, delayed by a signing at France's annual book fair, but it doesn't matter because I am finishing her book, Just Like Tomorrow, and hugely enjoying it. One of the things I like most is the genuine language of conversations of tens of millions of people that you rarely see written down. It is, both in French and the excellent English translation, a wordfest; clever and funny, too.
Just Like Tomorrow has been a huge hit in France, selling more than 70,000 copies.
Critics dubbed Guène 'the Sagan of the suburbs'. Few French books that come out of the vast, poor areas that ring the main cities are as accessible and as amusing as Guène's. Nor, crucially, do they combine both grit and a positive final message. The Journal Du Dimanche talked of 'the birth of a true talent'; another reviewer raved about 'the true voice of a lost generation'. It has been translated into 26 languages and is a rare example of a popular French language work that has broken out of the Francophone ghetto, lauded by critics in the Arab world and in the New York Times alike.
The book is written with the tone and wry glance of a 15-year-old living on an estate in a fictional Parisian suburb. It is the sort of place that went up in flames last November, when widespread rioting rocked France. The narrator, Doria, lives with her mother in a small flat. Her father - 'the old man' - recently returned to his native Morocco to marry a younger woman who is pregnant and might bear him a son.
Early on, the reader is plunged into the cultural chasms that yawn in modern France and, indeed, in modern Europe and that pose one of the biggest challenges to Western societies. On the second page, Doria mocks her conservative father and the culture of his native land. 'Daddy wanted a son. For his pride, his name, the honour of the family and, I suppose, for lots of other stupid reasons.'
The problem was, Doria explains, that he only had one child, her, a girl and, unlike at the local supermarket, 'there's no after-sales exchange service on babies'. So Dad goes to Morocco where, when the son arrives, Doria sneers, the whole village will turn out, a band of oldies with drums will play and they will cut the throat of a sheep to give a name to the baby. The name will be Mohammed, she comments mordantly. 'Bet you 10 to one.'
Yet, after mocking the culture of her father's homeland, Doria talks of how she has got herself signed off school meals because it is Ramadan, during which the devout fast. 'I always like to show the duality,' says Guène. 'Through the characters, through the language. There is the opposition of childhood and adulthood, of France and the land of someone's origin; there is the change you see in Doria over the course of the novel.'
Guène is at pains to stress that the book is not autobiographical - at least not directly. 'Doria is like me in her way of seeing the world, in the close relationship she has with her mother. The book is composed of episodes from my daily life, but it is not a description of my life. The characters are composites of people I know, people I have heard about, people I once sat opposite to on a bus.'
Guène's parents came from Algeria and her family - father a manual worker, mother who has never worked - is very close. The fact that many readers, especially in France, jumped to the conclusion that the broken family of the novel is her own irritates her - 'I have written a novel, but I always end up being asked about social issues and so on.' It is part of the stereotyping that much of the book is devoted to combating.
Though not intellectuals, Guène's parents were 'deeply respectful' of books, she tells me. 'I learned to read when I was very young,' Guène says. But in Les Courtillières, the large, public-housing projects where Guène grew up and still lives, there were almost no cultural facilities at all. 'Books are expensive things. My book in its first edition cost ¤18. If I hadn't written it, I would not have bought it.'
Guène started writing early, though not with any ambition to be published. 'I wrote purely for myself,' she says. At 13, she became involved in a publicly financed neighbourhood cultural centre, which offered theatre, film and writing workshops. By 14, she had finished her first short film, La zonzoniere (zonzon is slang for prison), about an adolescent girl whose zealously traditional father and brother keep her locked up in the family apartment (a storyline that reappears in Just Like Tomorrow
The director of the cultural centre noticed some of Guène's work, published in a school newspaper, and encouraged her to write something. The first 30 pages were written in two or three weeks. Guène, who was 17 at the time, was stunned when an editor from a major publishing house rang her to offer her a contract.
'I never thought all this would happen,' she says. 'All this' means regular appearances on French radio and television, frequent lectures and talks in colleges and schools and the freedom to return to her first love: screenplays. She has just finished directing a short film and is thinking about writing another book.
All her work is about the banlieues and countering the media stereotypes about them that she feels are so current. Journalists, with their 'disgusting, mythic, representations' of life in the poor suburbs, are a frequent target.
Guène's weapons in this war against misrepresentation are finely selected. Just Like Tomorrow's mix of humour, optimism, emotion, social observation and vicious political commentary lies behind its success. But reality is leavened with wonderful moments of black comedy. When not invited to a neighbour's wedding on the estate, Doria comments that she and her mother had no real desire to be part of 'the jetset' anyway.
The gulf between the France of the tourist brochures and reality informs so much of what Guène is writing about. Her book is an investigation of what it means to be French. 'People say that people like me should be more integrated,' says Guène. 'But what does that mean? I was born in France, I went to a French school, I speak French, I live in France. It is difficult to do the things that are apparently needed to be accepted if that means denying things that are a part of my culture. It is as if - and this is a bit brutal but is true - we [children of immigrants] are told, "You are children of the republic, but you are bastard children. You are very welcome here but with the following conditions." '
I ask what the France of 400-odd cheeses, the wine, great museums and art galleries means in Les Courtillières. 'The great symbols of France, the cultural richness etc ... all that is inaccessible,' she says. 'It has got nothing to do with me or our lives.'
The French title of the book, Kiffe Kiffe Demain, is an almost untranslatable mixture of appropriated Arabic and 'pure' French. Such linguistic and cultural juxtapositions litter the book's text, as they litter the language of most young people in Paris.
'Take the French language itself,' Guène says. 'Apparently, you must not touch it. It is reserved for the élite. It would be better if people interested themselves in what happens in the banlieues for reasons other than our social conditions. There is a richness and a creativity there as well as an enormous need to express oneself.'
Again, we return to the issue of immigration and assimilation. France, Guène says, is living an illusion. 'The republic has fantastic ideals but they don't work in the reality, in the concrete.' One issue that Guène says has never been resolved is historical. France has never come to terms with its colonial history. 'My father knew the war,' she says, referring to the bitter and horribly violent war of independence the Algerians waged against the French from 1954 to 1962. 'We had relatives tortured and imprisoned. But we are French. So we are split between two camps with a profoundly complicated past.'
But despite the biting attacks of the French political and social systems, the book is not negative. Doria and Guène are certainly caught between two worlds but are a bridge between them, too. The final chapters are optimistic. In the end, Guène makes clear, it is the French Republic, its message of liberté, egalité, fraternité and the magnificent heritage of French culture that, despite all the miscomprehension and resentment, offers Doria hope, a way forward and a home.
Walking out into the cultural desert of Porte de la Villette, leaving Guène, a French woman with Algerian parents, sipping Italian-style coffee in an American-themed bar, I hope she's right.
· Just Like Tomorrow is published by Chatto & Windus on 4 May.
Extract from Just Like Tomorrow
Seeing as mum's still on holiday, we decided to wander round Paris together. It was the first time she'd seen the Eiffel Tower even though she's been living half an hour from it for 20 years. Before now, it was just something on the TV on New Year's Eve, when it's all lit up and underneath it people are partying, dancing, kissing and getting wasted. Whatever, she was this impressed. 'It must be two or three times our block, isn't it?' Straight up, I told her. Except the estates round here generally don't get so much tourist interest. It's not like you find camera-toting Japanese mafia standing at the bottom of tower blocks in this neighbourhood. Personally, I think it's ugly, but you can't deny it's there. We didn't have enough money to buy a miniature Eiffel Tower either. They're even uglier than the original, but still, it's classy to have one on your telly.
Sunday April 23, 2006
The Observer
The Porte de la Villette, where I am to meet Faïza Guène, is not a picture-postcard part of Paris. It is a no-man's-land, a zone between the wealthy, beautifully preserved city itself and the poor, concrete suburbs. The 'porte', once a gateway through the ramparts of Paris, is now a junction on the busy beltway road of the Périphérique. There is a metro station, a forlorn, rain-lashed shopping centre, a railway bridge and a row of wet restaurants and bars.
And there is Café Docks, where Guène or, rather, her literary agent, has told me that we will meet. The cafe turns out to be another no-man's-land, though cultural rather than physical. It's an American-themed bar with screens showing MTV with French subtitles, assorted Broadway memorabilia and a menu featuring hamburgers, nachos, pizza and entrecôte-frites. Café Docks is empty save for a few teenagers sharing after-school coffees and a packet of cigarettes.
Guène is late, delayed by a signing at France's annual book fair, but it doesn't matter because I am finishing her book, Just Like Tomorrow, and hugely enjoying it. One of the things I like most is the genuine language of conversations of tens of millions of people that you rarely see written down. It is, both in French and the excellent English translation, a wordfest; clever and funny, too.
Just Like Tomorrow has been a huge hit in France, selling more than 70,000 copies.
Critics dubbed Guène 'the Sagan of the suburbs'. Few French books that come out of the vast, poor areas that ring the main cities are as accessible and as amusing as Guène's. Nor, crucially, do they combine both grit and a positive final message. The Journal Du Dimanche talked of 'the birth of a true talent'; another reviewer raved about 'the true voice of a lost generation'. It has been translated into 26 languages and is a rare example of a popular French language work that has broken out of the Francophone ghetto, lauded by critics in the Arab world and in the New York Times alike.
The book is written with the tone and wry glance of a 15-year-old living on an estate in a fictional Parisian suburb. It is the sort of place that went up in flames last November, when widespread rioting rocked France. The narrator, Doria, lives with her mother in a small flat. Her father - 'the old man' - recently returned to his native Morocco to marry a younger woman who is pregnant and might bear him a son.
Early on, the reader is plunged into the cultural chasms that yawn in modern France and, indeed, in modern Europe and that pose one of the biggest challenges to Western societies. On the second page, Doria mocks her conservative father and the culture of his native land. 'Daddy wanted a son. For his pride, his name, the honour of the family and, I suppose, for lots of other stupid reasons.'
The problem was, Doria explains, that he only had one child, her, a girl and, unlike at the local supermarket, 'there's no after-sales exchange service on babies'. So Dad goes to Morocco where, when the son arrives, Doria sneers, the whole village will turn out, a band of oldies with drums will play and they will cut the throat of a sheep to give a name to the baby. The name will be Mohammed, she comments mordantly. 'Bet you 10 to one.'
Yet, after mocking the culture of her father's homeland, Doria talks of how she has got herself signed off school meals because it is Ramadan, during which the devout fast. 'I always like to show the duality,' says Guène. 'Through the characters, through the language. There is the opposition of childhood and adulthood, of France and the land of someone's origin; there is the change you see in Doria over the course of the novel.'
Guène is at pains to stress that the book is not autobiographical - at least not directly. 'Doria is like me in her way of seeing the world, in the close relationship she has with her mother. The book is composed of episodes from my daily life, but it is not a description of my life. The characters are composites of people I know, people I have heard about, people I once sat opposite to on a bus.'
Guène's parents came from Algeria and her family - father a manual worker, mother who has never worked - is very close. The fact that many readers, especially in France, jumped to the conclusion that the broken family of the novel is her own irritates her - 'I have written a novel, but I always end up being asked about social issues and so on.' It is part of the stereotyping that much of the book is devoted to combating.
Though not intellectuals, Guène's parents were 'deeply respectful' of books, she tells me. 'I learned to read when I was very young,' Guène says. But in Les Courtillières, the large, public-housing projects where Guène grew up and still lives, there were almost no cultural facilities at all. 'Books are expensive things. My book in its first edition cost ¤18. If I hadn't written it, I would not have bought it.'
Guène started writing early, though not with any ambition to be published. 'I wrote purely for myself,' she says. At 13, she became involved in a publicly financed neighbourhood cultural centre, which offered theatre, film and writing workshops. By 14, she had finished her first short film, La zonzoniere (zonzon is slang for prison), about an adolescent girl whose zealously traditional father and brother keep her locked up in the family apartment (a storyline that reappears in Just Like Tomorrow
The director of the cultural centre noticed some of Guène's work, published in a school newspaper, and encouraged her to write something. The first 30 pages were written in two or three weeks. Guène, who was 17 at the time, was stunned when an editor from a major publishing house rang her to offer her a contract.
'I never thought all this would happen,' she says. 'All this' means regular appearances on French radio and television, frequent lectures and talks in colleges and schools and the freedom to return to her first love: screenplays. She has just finished directing a short film and is thinking about writing another book.
All her work is about the banlieues and countering the media stereotypes about them that she feels are so current. Journalists, with their 'disgusting, mythic, representations' of life in the poor suburbs, are a frequent target.
Guène's weapons in this war against misrepresentation are finely selected. Just Like Tomorrow's mix of humour, optimism, emotion, social observation and vicious political commentary lies behind its success. But reality is leavened with wonderful moments of black comedy. When not invited to a neighbour's wedding on the estate, Doria comments that she and her mother had no real desire to be part of 'the jetset' anyway.
The gulf between the France of the tourist brochures and reality informs so much of what Guène is writing about. Her book is an investigation of what it means to be French. 'People say that people like me should be more integrated,' says Guène. 'But what does that mean? I was born in France, I went to a French school, I speak French, I live in France. It is difficult to do the things that are apparently needed to be accepted if that means denying things that are a part of my culture. It is as if - and this is a bit brutal but is true - we [children of immigrants] are told, "You are children of the republic, but you are bastard children. You are very welcome here but with the following conditions." '
I ask what the France of 400-odd cheeses, the wine, great museums and art galleries means in Les Courtillières. 'The great symbols of France, the cultural richness etc ... all that is inaccessible,' she says. 'It has got nothing to do with me or our lives.'
The French title of the book, Kiffe Kiffe Demain, is an almost untranslatable mixture of appropriated Arabic and 'pure' French. Such linguistic and cultural juxtapositions litter the book's text, as they litter the language of most young people in Paris.
'Take the French language itself,' Guène says. 'Apparently, you must not touch it. It is reserved for the élite. It would be better if people interested themselves in what happens in the banlieues for reasons other than our social conditions. There is a richness and a creativity there as well as an enormous need to express oneself.'
Again, we return to the issue of immigration and assimilation. France, Guène says, is living an illusion. 'The republic has fantastic ideals but they don't work in the reality, in the concrete.' One issue that Guène says has never been resolved is historical. France has never come to terms with its colonial history. 'My father knew the war,' she says, referring to the bitter and horribly violent war of independence the Algerians waged against the French from 1954 to 1962. 'We had relatives tortured and imprisoned. But we are French. So we are split between two camps with a profoundly complicated past.'
But despite the biting attacks of the French political and social systems, the book is not negative. Doria and Guène are certainly caught between two worlds but are a bridge between them, too. The final chapters are optimistic. In the end, Guène makes clear, it is the French Republic, its message of liberté, egalité, fraternité and the magnificent heritage of French culture that, despite all the miscomprehension and resentment, offers Doria hope, a way forward and a home.
Walking out into the cultural desert of Porte de la Villette, leaving Guène, a French woman with Algerian parents, sipping Italian-style coffee in an American-themed bar, I hope she's right.
· Just Like Tomorrow is published by Chatto & Windus on 4 May.
Extract from Just Like Tomorrow
Seeing as mum's still on holiday, we decided to wander round Paris together. It was the first time she'd seen the Eiffel Tower even though she's been living half an hour from it for 20 years. Before now, it was just something on the TV on New Year's Eve, when it's all lit up and underneath it people are partying, dancing, kissing and getting wasted. Whatever, she was this impressed. 'It must be two or three times our block, isn't it?' Straight up, I told her. Except the estates round here generally don't get so much tourist interest. It's not like you find camera-toting Japanese mafia standing at the bottom of tower blocks in this neighbourhood. Personally, I think it's ugly, but you can't deny it's there. We didn't have enough money to buy a miniature Eiffel Tower either. They're even uglier than the original, but still, it's classy to have one on your telly.
posted by Muslims-R-Us at 9:13 AM
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