Welcome to Litsy!

An excellent novel on immigration, (post)colonialism, identity, memory, aculturation, belonging and France and Algeria's conflictual relationship. Naïma, main character, a French woman of Algerian origins, tries to understand why her grandparents left their homeland in 1962 and never went back.

Effective language, not overly sentimental or sensational in a story with plenty of political, social & physical violence. Zeniter stops to observe the landscape with a newcomer‘s eye: the heavy skies of Normandy compared to the bright sun of the Algerian mountains. Thoughtful & straightforward depictions of migrants‘ pride, shame, confusion, fear, loss. The rifts that occur in migrant families with different languages & childhood landscapes.

Family saga over three generations, migration from Algeria to ??: Ali, who flees the mountain olive groves of Kabylia in 1962 when violence threatens families of the Harkis, his son Hamid who straddles the two worlds as they settle in a migrant camp in Provence, then move north, & Parisian Naïma, who feels removed from her roots & researches family in a return to Algeria. Language, culture, marginalization, family, adaptation, strength. ? 2017