All Men Want to Know: 'Intense, gorgeous, troubling, seductive' SARAH WATERS
Aug 2020 · Penguin UK
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About this ebook
'Intense, gorgeous, troubling, seductive - a novel that has to be surrendered to rather than read' Sarah Waters
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF AN ENGLISH PEN TRANSLATES AWARD
All Men Want to Know traces Nina Bouraoui's blissful childhood in Algeria, a wild, sun-soaked paradise, with hazy summer afternoons spent swimming, diving, and driving across the desert. Her mother is French, her father Algerian; when racial tensions begin to surface in their neighbourhood, her mother suffers an unspeakable act of violence that forces the family to flee the country.
In Paris, eighteen-year-old Nina lives alone. It's the 1980s. Four nights a week she makes her way to The Kat, a legendary gay nightclub, where she watches women from the sidelines, afraid of her own desires, her sudden and intoxicating freedom. In her solitude, she starts to write - and finds herself writing about her mother.
All Men Want to Know is a haunting, lyrical international bestseller about mothers and daughters, about shame and sexuality, about existing between two cultures and belonging to neither. A phenomenon in France, this is a defining portrait of womanhood from one of Europe's greatest living writers.
'Blown away by the power and lyricism of All Men Want to Know. What a book. Read it' Niven Govinden, author of THIS BRUTAL HOUSE
'Magnificent... a captivating autobiographical novel' Elle
'A tour de force' Le Figaro
'Haunting, spell-binding, luminous' Lire
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF AN ENGLISH PEN TRANSLATES AWARD
All Men Want to Know traces Nina Bouraoui's blissful childhood in Algeria, a wild, sun-soaked paradise, with hazy summer afternoons spent swimming, diving, and driving across the desert. Her mother is French, her father Algerian; when racial tensions begin to surface in their neighbourhood, her mother suffers an unspeakable act of violence that forces the family to flee the country.
In Paris, eighteen-year-old Nina lives alone. It's the 1980s. Four nights a week she makes her way to The Kat, a legendary gay nightclub, where she watches women from the sidelines, afraid of her own desires, her sudden and intoxicating freedom. In her solitude, she starts to write - and finds herself writing about her mother.
All Men Want to Know is a haunting, lyrical international bestseller about mothers and daughters, about shame and sexuality, about existing between two cultures and belonging to neither. A phenomenon in France, this is a defining portrait of womanhood from one of Europe's greatest living writers.
'Blown away by the power and lyricism of All Men Want to Know. What a book. Read it' Niven Govinden, author of THIS BRUTAL HOUSE
'Magnificent... a captivating autobiographical novel' Elle
'A tour de force' Le Figaro
'Haunting, spell-binding, luminous' Lire
Ratings and reviews
5.0
2 reviews
Mike Sierra
- Flag inappropriate
May 28, 2023
the Nobel Prize belongs to her in 2025
About the author
Nina Bouraoui (Author)
Nina Bouraoui was born in 1967 to a French mother and an Algerian father. She lived in Algiers until the age of fourteen before moving to France and becoming a writer. She is one of France's most renowned living novelists, and has won several prestigious literary prizes, including the Prix Emmanuel Robles, the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Renaudot, and she was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Her novels have been translated into over 15 languages.
Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Translator)
Aneesa Abbas Higgins is an award-winning translator. Her most recent translation is Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin. She lives in London.
Nina Bouraoui was born in 1967 to a French mother and an Algerian father. She lived in Algiers until the age of fourteen before moving to France and becoming a writer. She is one of France's most renowned living novelists, and has won several prestigious literary prizes, including the Prix Emmanuel Robles, the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Renaudot, and she was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Her novels have been translated into over 15 languages.
Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Translator)
Aneesa Abbas Higgins is an award-winning translator. Her most recent translation is Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin. She lives in London.
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