Franco-Moroccan author and Goncourt Prize winner Leïla Slimani has published a new book, 'Le Pays des autres', which serves as a personal and political exploration of her relationship with the Arabic language. In interviews, Slimani has described feeling a sense of foreignness towards Arabic, a language she heard in her childhood home but did not fully master, creating a complex emotional and identity-based connection.
The book, which is part of a planned trilogy, uses this linguistic exploration as a lens to examine broader themes of colonialism, identity, and belonging between Morocco and France. Slimani's work often interrogates the spaces between cultures and languages, and this new volume continues that focus through a deeply autobiographical frame.
Slimani, who writes in French, has stated that the act of writing this book was an attempt to 'reappropriate' a part of her heritage that felt distant. Critical reception notes the work's contribution to ongoing discussions about post-colonial identity and the intimate politics of language in multicultural societies.
