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.
About the Author: Algerian novelist and poet Ahlem Mosteghanemi is the bestselling female author in the Arab world. She has six million followers on Facebook and was ranked in the top ten most influential women in the Middle East by Forbes in 2006. The previous book in her trilogy of bestselling novels, The Bridges of Constantine, was published by Bloomsbury, and has been translated into several languages and adapted into a television series.
Nancy Roberts is a prize-winning translator with experience in the areas of modern Arabic literature, current events, Christian-Muslim relations and Islamic thought, history and law. She lives in Amman, Jordan with her husband and two daughters.
