Harare Review of Books

224 pages. Expected publication date: August 6, 2024 from Pushkin Press. Fiction.

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Sarah, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, wants to escape. She has her beauty, and she’s French. She’s also very driven. Driss, the guy she sets her heart on, is very rich—maybe as rich as the King, ugly, socially inept, and initially seemingly not interested. But Sarah is determined.

This is a richly imagined, compelling coming-of-age novel that delivers humour, sympathy and sorrow in bucketfuls. Sarah’s naivety is charming, and you just know she’s going to be severely disillusioned, but still, you have so much hope for her. Driss, the beast, is initially hard to read, but I found my heart going out to him too. They’re just two young people caught up in the rigid social stratification of Moroccan society. And Assor and Lehrer bring that society to life in the pages of this novel: the poor, struggling every day from sunrise to sunset, contrasted with the mostly idle and cruel rich. Even though Sarah manages to find—inveigle—her way into a circle of rich young people, her naivety blinds her to the many ways she can never fit in. Her desperate decision to secure her future with Driss only makes it more clear how out of her depth she truly is.

But Sarah is a scrappy and lovable heroine. She’s come from nothing, but she’s smart, and knows what to do in the end. While the novel’s ending is ambivalent, the reader just knows these two will be okay. They have to be. It’s a lovely love story, and we are free to imagine that happy ending on our own.

Many thanks to Pushkin Press and to Edelweiss for early access.