Author(s): Ahlem Mosteghanemi; Nancy Roberts (Translator)

Literature

Love always sits in a seat other than the one we were expecting it to, right alongside the place where we expected love to be.

In the midst of the Algerian civil war, Hayat is a young novelist trapped in a loveless marriage. While her husband, a high-ranking officer, preoccupies himself with politics, Hayat finds freedom from her highly regimented life in the world of her writing, where she weaves a passionate story for her characters.

But the line between fiction and reality blurs when she falls for a man who seems to have walked straight out of the pages of her notebook, a man who seduces her, rather than her heroine, with his silence.

As love on paper becomes a forbidden love lived out in the dark corners of a broken city, Hayat's country convulses with political upheaval. In a place where those who dare to write the truth are made to pay a heavy price, she and her characters will discover that no one can truly be the author of her own destiny.

A powerful story of love, identity, and liberation.