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Nina Bouraoui

Aneesa Abbas Higgins

All Men Want to Know: 'Intense, gorgeous, troubling, seductive' SARAH WATERS Paperback – 6 Aug. 2020

by Nina Bouraoui (Author), Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Translator)

14 ratings

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'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

'Intense yet gorgeous and deeply moving, All Men Want to Know is a defining portrait of womanhood that grips at the heart of the immigrant experience, about existing between two cultures yet belonging to neither' Dazed

'It's easy to see why this novel dominated the bestseller charts for so long in France' Monocle

Print length

192 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Viking
Publication date

6 Aug. 2020
Dimensions

13.5 x 1.4 x 21.6 cm
ISBN-10

0241447720
ISBN-13

978-0241447727
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Product details

Publisher : Viking (6 Aug. 2020)
Language : English
Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 0241447720
ISBN-13 : 978-0241447727
Dimensions : 13.5 x 1.4 x 21.6 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 79,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 163 in LGBTQ+ Political & Social Issues
- 682 in Political Fiction (Books)
- 1,594 in LGBTQ+ Literature & Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
14 ratings

Product description

Review

Magnificent... a captivating autobiographical novel ― Elle

A vital book for our times... Nina's story will touch any reader who has ever felt lost or out of place, or who has ever yearned to love and be loved ― European Literature Network

Haunting, spell-binding, luminous ― Lire

Intense, gorgeous, troubling, seductive - a novel that has to be surrendered to rather than read -- Sarah Waters, Booker-shortlisted author of Fingersmith, The Night Watch and The Little Stranger

A tour de force ― Le Figaro

An incandescent writer ― Les Echos

The brilliant thing about this book is that it makes reading autobiographies chic. Bouraoui's unflinching depiction of her life, told in a detached, measured tone, catches one unawares. Her descriptions, although witty, are also unmistakably sad. Her love for all that is womanhood is heart-warming. ― Irish Times

It's easy to see why this novel dominated the bestseller charts for so long in France ― Monocle

Blown away by the power and lyricism of All Men Want to Know. It's a resolutely queer novel of female sexual identity, of remembering and becoming, trauma, mothers and daughters, colonialism, and finding a way through. What a book. Read it. -- Niven Govinden, author of THIS BRUTAL HOUSE

A deeply personal exploration of cultural and personal identity, sexuality and belonging. Raw and sensual, readers will be enraptured by the narrator's intense evocations of guilt, desire and longing ― Scotsman

About the 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 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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Customer reviews

5 star		33%
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3 star		29%
2 star		9%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Michael Potter

Thought provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 September 2020

Verified Purchase

It was a very thought provoking novel

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Stephanie Jane (Literary Flits)

Brilliantly insightful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 August 2020

I think that All Men Want To Know is going to be a Marmite of a book in that readers will either love the atmosphere and character Bouraoui creates, or will be very irritated by her writing style. Personally I am firmly in the first camp!

In what she describes as 'autobiographical fiction' Bouraoui explores her overwhelming sense of not belonging. She is half-Algerian and half-French and finds herself suspended between each of these cultures without being at home in either. She is also a closeted lesbian whose coming out would be prevented by the strict social taboos of her Algerian childhood so she struggles to establish a sexual identity for herself even in the more open climate of 1980s Paris. All the aspects of her personality are jumbled together and this is brilliantly expressed through similar jumbling of the first person narration of All Men Want To Know. Our unnamed narrator skips between moments from her Algerian childhood to nights at a Parisian nightclub, memories of her French grandmother to her intense need to write. Some scenes last for a page or more, others might be just a paragraph, so the full novel reads more as stream of consciousness than organised memoir.

I loved the sense of not knowing where to draw lines between Bouraoui the character and Bouraoui the author and this reminded me of reading Seeing Red by Lina Meruane. All Men Want To Know has such a powerful authenticity to it that I came away feeling as though I truly understood our narrator's personal confusion. This is very much a novel of women's experiences and women's relationships between friends and within families as well as sexual love. I highly recommend this book to readers of intense psychological stories and to people who can empathise with feeling alienated.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Roman Clodia

Exploring sexual and ethnic identities

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 August 2020

The thing is, there's a huge trend for autofiction which explores identities: sexual and ethnic, and this one doesn't have anything new to say. The narrator is the child of a French-Algerian marriage, and the latter culture forces her to hate and hide her queerness, while the former allows her to explore it. There are the obligatory episodes of violence against women, of the crises of colonialism, and the whole thing is articulated in what I think of as 'creative writing class' prose: dreamy and lyrical, fragmented and lacking incisiveness. The structure makes the contents feel shallow, lacking vividness and engagement - the voice is monotone and never changes pace. Sorry, I feel I've read too many other books set in the same ideological and literary space, and this one doesn't distinguish itself in either voice or emotion.

Helpful

Ms. I. Nwosu

Beautiful book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 August 2020

I thought Nina’s writing style was rich, beautifully written, descriptive and fascinating. I enjoyed the book and getting an insight into her LGBT journey, her childhood, and what it was like growing up in a dual heritage household in both Algeria and France, as well as the challenges she faced in life - family, relationships, cultural, and sense of self and identity.

Helpful

Andres K.

Incredible!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 August 2020

Nina Bouraoui writes about growing up between France and Algeria, about becoming a writer, and about being a very young woman exploring her sexuality in Paris during the 1980s. I loved, loved this novel. It’s hard to describe the effect of this torrent of beautiful prose that is formed by hope, hurt and history. One of my favourite novels that I’ve read this year.

One person found this helpful

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All Men Want to Know: 'Intense, gorgeous, troubling, seductive' SARAH WATERS Paperback – 6 Aug. 2020

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