Malentendues

Emna, a married lawyer from Tunis in her forties, is engaged by the European Union's delegation to survey the women of Tezdaïne, a village near Midoun on Djerba: their civic life, their autonomy, their relations with their husbands, their access to basic rights. Bureaucracy and a closed, suspicious community make the work hard, and men and some women alike resist her intrusion. Yet the villagers prove to be fighters in their own way, and as their confidences come, about their bodies and their sexuality too, Emna's certainties as an emancipated woman begin to waver: is her modernity only an illusion, and what does equality mean? On the sunlit island she comes back to life.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

328 pages in the original

Set in

Tunisia

First published

2024 by Elyzad

Author's age

72 when first published

ISBN

9789973581303 (original)