Read more
Yamina Taleb is approaching her seventieth birthday. These days, she strives for a quiet life, grateful to the country that hosts her and her adored family. The closest she gets to drama is scooping revolutionary bargains in the form of plastic kitchenware gadgets. But Yaminas children feel differently about life in Paris. They dont always fit in, and it hurts. Omar wonders whether its too late to change course as he watches the world pass him by from the drivers seat of his Uber. His sisters are tired of having to prove themselves and their allegiance to a place that is at once home, and not. When the Talebs go away together on holiday not to the motherland, but to a villa-with-pool rental near the Atlantic coast they come to realise just how strongly family defines our sense of belonging. Moving between Algeria and Paris, Discretion touchingly evokes the realities of a first- and second-generation family as they carve out a future for themselves in France, finding one another as they go along.
About the author
Faïza Guène is an award-winning French Algerian writer and director. She made an astonishing literary debut aged 17 with Kiffe kiffe demain (Just Like Tomorrow), which was an international bestseller and has been translated into more than 25 languages. . Guène has directed several short films and is a co-writer on Oussekine (BAFTA-nominated for best international TV drama). In 2022 Faïza was made the youngest ever International Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sarah Ardizzone is an award-winning translator from the French. She has received the Scott Moncrieff Prize twice for her translations of Faïza Guène’s novels, with Men Don't Cry and Just Like Tomorrow
Summary
* A warm and humorous novel about working-class Algerian women in France as they reconcile their inherited trauma of migration with forging a future on their terms by an internationally bestselling and award-winning author.
