Part of Series
The rebellions within an interracial family play out against the countercultural rebellions of the 1960s in this sexy, stylish, sophisticated new novel by the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny and In the Country of Others. Morocco, 1968: Two siblings, unusual for their biracial parentage—their father is Moroccan, their mother French—search for their place in a world not made to fit them. Aicha, strong-willed and studious, dreams of leaving Morocco to study medicine in her mother's homeland. Her younger brother, Selim, the family's errant misfit, will forge a path of rebellion among the European hippies descending en masse to practice drugs and free love. Children of the revolution, now coming of age in the violent, nihilistic "years of lead," they seem destined to echo their homeland's fate: teetering between liberation and corruption, idealism and compromise. Enduring racism and abandonment, and experiencing the thrills and terrors of freedom and the iron thralls of desire, they navigate a path toward themselves: who they are, and who they dream of becoming. In Watch Us Dance, Leila Slimani draws on her family's inspiring story to craft a bold, powerful chronicle of the relentless human quest for freedom and self-knowledge.
Author
Leïla Slimani is a French writer and journalist of Moroccan ancestry. In 2016 she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for her novel Chanson douce. Slimani was born in Rabat, Morocco and studied later political science and media studies in Paris. After that she temporarily considered a career as an actress and began to work as a journalist for the magazine Jeune Afrique. In 2014 she published her first novel Dans le jardin de l’ogre, which two years later was followed by the psychological thriller Chanson douce. The latter quickly turned into a bestseller with over 450,000 copies printed within a year even before the book was awarded the Prix Goncourt.
