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Product Description
Product Description
A housing estate in the Paris suburbs. Madjid is growing up caught between two cultures. At home, he listens to his mother's constant invective in Arabic as she attempts to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings; at school, he tries to be part of French culture, a culture that rejects and insults Arabs. In a direct language, punctuated by moments of poetic beauty, Mehdi Charef portrays a reality only too rarely the subject of fiction. An immediate success upon publication in France in 1983, Tea in the Harem became the rallying-point for second-generation Algerians and Moroccans, who gave themselves the name 'beur': slang for ?Arab?.
About the Author
Mehdi Charef was born in Algeria in 1952. He moved to Paris with his family in 1964 and worked in an engineering factory in the suburbs after leaving school. Tea in the Harem was originally published in 1983 and was made into an award-winning film directed by the author.
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First Sentence
Majid is down on his knees tinkering with his bike. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Majid is down on his knees tinkering with his bike. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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3 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Beur Literature
14 Dec 2000
Format:Paperback
I read this book after I read "Lila Says" by Chimo. These books are both similar in setting. It was a depressing but accurate description of life in the arab populated Paris ghettos. The value of life, the dead end feeling, and the chaos and feeling of hopelessness was depicted like I have never read before. The characters seemed real and the surroundings were easy to picture, very vivid. And you felt for everyone in the book especially the families who came to France for a better life and received something far worse- destruction of their culture, detrioration of their children, rascism, and the feeling of leaving a whole familiar world behind and being trapped in a concrete world. more than enyting it also has french characters too that are within the same situation. It is very much telling of the immigrant experience anywhere for arabs- they leave an opressive regime where they are poor and want better and think they are going to have an incredible life some where else, so they leave their country, their language, and their family behind in search. what they find is a world in repulsion with theirs where they are very different and it is hard to survive and with this everything they know is gone and their children are different from they are and feel even more disconnected from their surroundings and their parents world. Well written.
6 of 11 people found the following review helpful
I'll have tea in this harem any time.
16 Feb 2000
Format:Paperback
Tea in the Harem is an excellent account of life in the slums of Paris. It is at times disturbingly real and deals with Foreigners trying to make a go of it in the mean streets of France. I liked it because it reveals another side of Paris; a bleak, dirty, and dangerous side not often dealt with in books and movies. Anyone who has an interest in racial conflict and poverty will find this book enlightening. If you like tea, and you like harems, then you'll love Tea in the Harem.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Well Written and Thought Provocing
23 Oct 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Charef sucks you into the slums of Paris long enough to understand how life there truly is. I recommend this book to everyone; especially to middle and upper class individuals looking for an accurate perspective on lower class life.
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