Tomboy (European Women Writers)

Description: How do you live in Algeria when you grow up speaking French, with a French mother? How do you live in France when you've spent your childhood in Algeria with an Algerian father? 'Tomboy' is the story of a girl whose father calls her Brio, whose alter ego is Amine, and whose mother is a blue-eyed blond. But who is she? Born five years after Algerian independence in 1967, she navigates the cultural, emotional, and linguistic boundaries of identity living in a world that doesn't seem to recognize her. In this semi-autobiographical novel, the young French Algerian author Nina Bouraoui introduces us to a girl who feels that Algeria is the country of men. Her childhood years spent in Algeria lead her to explore the borderland between genders as she tries to find her balance between nations, races, and identities. With prose modelling the rhythm of the seasons and the sea, 'Tomboy' enters the innermost reality of a life lived on the edge of several cultures. Review: 'Bouraoui's quiet and inwardly focused coming-of-age novel delves deeply into intimate questions of self-definition - and ultimately the urge to become a writer.' Publishers Weekly Praise for the original French Garcon manque: 'Painful, enlightening, fascinating, impossible, yet very real... It is these visceral feelings experienced by almost everyone of double nationality that Nina Bouraoui so masterfully expresses through her highly sensual and incantatory writing.' Melissa Marus, World Liteature Today