To view prices and purchase online, please login or create an account now.



The Art of Losing

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Art of Losing
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Alice Zeniter
Translated by Frank Wynne
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:480
Dimensions(mm): Height 196,Width 132
Category/GenreModern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9781509884131
ClassificationsDewey:843.92
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Pan Macmillan
Imprint Picador
Publication Date 3 March 2022
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

'Remarkable . . . a novel about people that never loses its sense of humanity.' Sunday Times 'A deeply human text about the ghosts of identity and decolonization.' Vanity Fair Naima has always known that her family came from Algeria - but up until now, that meant very little to her. Born and raised in France, her knowledge of that foreign country is limited to what she's learned from her grandparents' tiny flat in a crumbling French sink estate: the food cooked for her, the few precious things they brought with them when they fled. On the past, her family is silent. Why was her grandfather Ali forced to leave? Was he a harki - an Algerian who worked for and supported the French during the Algerian War of Independence? Once a wealthy landowner, how did he become an immigrant scratching a living in France? Naima's father, Hamid, says he remembers nothing. A child when the family left, in France he re-made himself: education was his ticket out of the family home, the key to acceptance into French society. But now, for the first time since they left, one of Ali's family is going back. Naima will see Algeria for herself, will ask the questions about her family's history that, till now, have had no answers. Spanning three generations across seventy years, Alice Zeniter's The Art of Losing tells the story of how people carry on in the face of loss: the loss of a country, an identity, a way to speak to your children. It's a story of colonization and immigration, and how in some ways, we are a product of the things we've left behind. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne This book is supported by the Institut francais (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess programme

Author Biography

Alice Zeniter is a French novelist, translator, scriptwriter and director. Her novel Take This Man was published in English in 2011. Zeniter has won many awards for her work in France, including the Prix Litteraire de la Porte Doree, the Prix Renaudot des Lyceens and the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens, which was awarded to The Art of Losing. She lives in Britanny, France.