October 27, 2004
Gučne Profile
French-Algerian writing sensation Faďza Gučne is profiled in the New York Times today. An earlier profile had appeared in Newsweek last month. The newspapers are interested because Gučne's first novel, a funny take on the daily life of a small Moroccan family in a suburb of Paris, has already sold 25,000 copies in France, and because the author is barely out of her teens.
In her torn jeans, scuffed Adidas and zipped-up sweatshirt, Ms. Gučne seems alternately pleased and uncomfortable with her success. She doesn't like being a symbol of the suburbs or being likened to Françoise Sagan, the French writer who died last month and who wrote her best-selling first novel, "Bonjour Tristesse," when she was 18.Negotiations with American publishers are said to be underway. If you're reading me in France, je peux lire le bouquin en francais, so send it along!
"I don't want to be the Sagan of the housing projects," she said. "That's a bit much. I don't want to be called the Arab girl from the suburbs who had a tough life and made good because I don't think I had a tough life."
Still, she is pleased that it is not only soccer players and rap musicians from the suburbs who can make good, and proud that a neighbor told her that her book was the first he had ever read.
(Thanks to all the readers who sent the NYT link.)
posted by Laila Lalami at 12:00 AM
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