Harcourt, Inc.
Available: 06/16/06
5.13 x 8 · 192 pages
978-0-15-603048-9
CDN $13.95 · pb

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Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

A Novel

Faïza Guène

Doria is a 15-year-old Muslim French girl living in the infamous Paradise projects in suburban Paris and suffering all the usual problems: an overworked mother, an absent father and an inability to understand boys. She endures a parade of social workers with names like Madame Thingamajig and Monsieur Whosawhatsit.

Surrounded by drugs, crime and racism, hers might be a tale of endless tragedy. But Doria isn’t the complaining type. She’ll make the best of her destiny. Turn the Arab phrase kif-kif—“same-old, same-old”—into a French phrase, kiffe kiffe. Things are getting better all the time.

Disarmingly funny and fresh, Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is a hopeful, wise and intimate portrait of Arab immigrant life.

“A light-hearted bonbon of a book. Not since director Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 hit Hate has there been such a compelling portrait of the Parisian suburbs. Doria [is] a volatile mix of adolescent insecurity, misguided bravado and tenderness.” —Newsweek International

“[Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow] challenges the conventional wisdom that the suburbs are only dangerous, crime-infested wastelands where hatred runs deep and hope is nonexistent.” —New York Times

Faïza Guène attends the University of St. Denis and has just completed her first short film. The child of Algerian immigrants, she grew up in the public housing projects of Pantin, outside Paris. This is her first book.