Bernardine Evaristo. I liked her distinctive voice and her way of telling a story in Girl, Woman, Other . I recognised a great deal of myself in that book and it was different from what I had found in French writers. Guène finds the images from these matches, 20 years apart, enlightening. Ladj Ly’s scene on the Champs Elysees “means so much more than just the match; [it] represents an ideal of what the spirit of unity should be,” she says. Involuntarily, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my identity. I would have preferred to spend more time thinking about my literature.” Inherited shame Guène’s slang expressions, paired with the use of the present tense, occasionally make “Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow” read more like a series of adolescent diary entries than a novel. Yet her dry wit elevates the book above juvenilia. “He’s always high and I think maybe that’s why I like him,” Doria says of a much-older, Rimbaud-spouting drug dealer on whom she harbors a secret crush. A family friend’s husband who spends half the year in Algeria with his second wife and the other half in France with his first, “knew how to hit the right balance, rein himself in. He does it part-time.” Riffing on the Arabic phrase “inshallah,” or “God willing,” Doria remarks, “But, thing is, you can’t ever know if God’s willing or not.” There are even hints of poetry. “Outside, it was gray like the color of our building’s concrete and it was drizzling in very fine drops, as if God were spitting on all of us,” Guène writes.

This coming of age novel was recommended to me by Rida and while I didn’t like it as much as I had hoped to, I did find it very stark and honest in its portrayal of life on the poor side in Paris, France. I don’t know about you guys but I have a very selective way of thinking about Paris. To me, it is the city of lights, romance and fluffy pastries. Before I read this book, I didn’t think about the people who populated the city, who breathe, live and animate this city. There’s this authenticity in the narrator’s voice, this matter of fact manner of relating facts that I could not help but respond to. It was a moment that was crystallised for the character Zouzou (a young woman whose mother is French and her father a Kabyle from Algeria) and for many French when the country won the World Cup football match in 1998. But for the moment he says he is focusing on his job at Parisian publishing house Latte s, where has been appointed head of a literary imprint . While Sarah Ardizzone, who translated Kiffe Kiffe Demain into English, spent time living in Marseille to brush up on the verlan spoken there , Kover went online to find slang dictionaries and watch vloggers who spoke in slang on their YouTube channels to help her find her feet.Et si vraiment on considère ce livre comme un roman, on ressent tout différemment. Cela pourrait être une sorte de « one-woman show » avec toute la finesse d'observation et de retransmission nécessaire au plaisir du public, véhiculant un message. And that novel, Kiffe Kiffe Demain (Just Like Tomorrow), would then be published in 2004, to great acclaim. To date, it has sold 400,000 copies in France alone and it is now even used as reading material in high schools. I wonder why they call them wisdom teeth… The more they grow, the more you understand stuff? Personally, I’ve learned that learning hurts.” Your novel is very frank about family tensions and the difficulties the younger generation has in finding love. Given the hostile stereotypes about Algerians in France, did you ever feel a desire to present your characters in a more obviously “positive” light? Guène says that at the time, she was constantly asked what it was like to live in a violent, disenfranchised suburb. But her experience was not one of violence, instead, it was one of a tightly knit community.

The title of this book, Kiffe kiffe demain, must give translators nightmares. The problem is that it’s a play on words, and not just on any normal words, but ghetto slang. “ Kif kif” is vernacular roughly meaning “same ‘ole, same ‘ole”; “ kiffer” is vernacular meaning “to like/love”. The title has a bittersweet tang derived from the opposing feelings of despair (“same ‘ole shit tomorrow”) and hope (“loving tomorrow”). That title must also give those tight-arsed asshats at the French Academy nightmares. “But zis is ghetto Frrench! Quelle horreur!” Moving and irreverent, sad and funny, full of rage and intelligence. [Guène's] characters are unforgettable, her voice fresh, and her book a delight." -- Laila Lalami, author of Hope and Other Dangerous PursuitsNarrator Doria's voice may grate for some readers (and the ending is perhaps a bit too neat in that YA way). I have never understood why so many older child and teenage narrators pepper their stories with "I wish [really bad thing] would happen to [so and so]". I don't remember thinking this about more than one or two people (and it's not like I was having a great time socially or at home), and I can't ever remember other kids saying it. In books I've read in adulthood, I've usually thought of it as lazy shorthand for a more inchoate childish and youthful dissatisfaction, but as Faïza Guène wrote this when she was still a teenager herself, and she grew up on an estate like Doria's, where many people have far greater material hardship than most of my old classmates, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt in the way that I wouldn't to a well-meaning middle-class 45 year old trying to write the same character. When France wins the final against Croatia, the camera pans across a multi-ethnic crowd, all cheering for their country. Ly won the 2019 Cannes Festival jury prize for Les Miserables and the film went on to be nominated for best international feature film. Après un début qui nous interpelle et qui déclenche la révolte, le lecteur lit avec soulagement la suite de l'histoire qui redonne l'espoir et donne l'envie de le faire lire autour de soi. She began writing as a young child and while in secondary school, Guène would write stories and make films in after-school clubs.

A travers son histoire Doria livre sans misérabilisme, une image de sa banlieue parisienne, Livry-Gargan, celle de toute une communauté multi-culturelle marquée par le manque de ressources et de considération. Translated, it's a very easy read, basically YA, though for a reader of French around A-Level standard, the slang will take a bit of getting used to. Subject-wise, it technically has that realist 'worthiness' characteristic of the IFFP - it's about an impoverished French-Moroccan teenage girl living on a tough estate on the outskirts of Paris - but it's not in the least dry, so 'worthy' wasn't an adjective that occurred to me until afterwards. This book didn't exist when I was doing A-levels, but Kiffe Kiffe plus an older classic would be a better choice than two of the latter, and certainly gives a less rarefied view of France than the likes of Marcel Pagnol. Born in Bobigny, France, in 1985, to parents of Algerian origin, [1] Guène grew up in Pantin, in the northeastern suburbs of Paris. She attended Collège Jean Jaurès, followed by Lycée Marcelin Berthelot in Pantin. [2] She began studies in sociology at Université Paris VIII, in St-Denis, before abandoning them to pursue writing and directing full-time. Faïza Guène est réalisatrice de plusieurs courts-métrages. Parmi ceux-ci, on notera : "La Zonzonnière" en 1999, "RTT et Rumeurs" en 2002 et "Rien que des mots" en 2004.

J'avais été attiré par certains échos concernant ce livre. Je l'ai obtenu dans le cadre des échanges de Babelio et ne peux que remercier « Paroles » de me l'avoir fait parvenir. Il y a bien sûr dans les surprises agréables, des éléments de réticences… (Sinon, on serait dans l'angélisme total, et ce n'est pas le lieu !).