When Ahlème's mother was killed in a village massacre, she left Algeria for France with her father and brother and never returned. Now, more than a decade later, she is practically French, yet in many ways she remains an outsider. Her dreams for a better life have been displaced by the harsh realities she faces every day. Her father is unable to work after an accident at his construction site. Her brother boils over with adolescent energy and teeters dangerously close to choosing a life of crime. And as a temporary resident, Ahlème could at any moment be sent back to a village and a life that are now more foreign than Paris. In Some Dream for Fools, Faïza Guène explores the disparity between the expectations and limitations of immigrant life in the West and tells a remarkable story of one woman's courage to dream.
"Super-young, super-cool and fast becoming known as one of the hottest literary talents of multicultural Europe, Guene takes us on a tour of the tough suburbs of Paris and Algeria, where having the wrong-colour passport sentences you to a half-life. A funny, intimate and timely book by one of the stars of tomorrow."
Sunday Telegraph, 50 of the best holiday reads (UK)
"[C]ompelling... reveals Guene to be a promising addition to the world's literary voices."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Remarkable . . . a glimpse of life beyond the Paris city limits and into a new, multicultural France . . . Heralded as, alternately, a Gallic version of White Teeth, The Catcher in the Rye and Bridget Jones's Diary . . . ."
