Sex and Lies

INTRODUCTION
When, in the summer of 2014, I published my first novel, Adèle, some French journalists expressed surprise that a Moroccan woman could write such a book. What they meant by that was an unconstrained book , a sexy book , a straight-talking, popular book, the story of a woman suffering from sex addiction. As if, by culture, I should have been more prudish, more reserved. As if I should have made do with writing an erotic novelette with orientalist shades, worthy scion of Scheherazade that I am.

Yet I feel that North Africans are well placed to take on themes relating to sexual suffering, frustration and alienation. The fact of living or having grown up in societies without sexual freedom makes sex a subject of constant obsession. Besides, sex is one issue that s well represented in contemporary North African writing. It s there in the autobiographical novels of Mohamed Choukri, in the poetry and novels of Tahar Ben Jelloun, in the novels and criticism of Mohamed Leftah and in the novels and films about gay life of Abdellah Taïa. Erotic, even steamy, literature continues to be reinvented particularly among women, such as Lebanese writer Joumana Haddad and Syrian writer Salwa Al Neimi, whose novel The Proof of the Honey became a bestseller, following in the footsteps of the mysterious Nedjma, eponymous protagonist of the novel by Kateb Yacine.

So my first novel is in no way exceptional. I can even say it s no accident that I created a character like Adèle a frustrated woman who lies and leads a double life. She s a woman eaten by regrets and by her own hypocrisy, a woman who steps out of line yet never experiences pleasure. Adèle is, in a way, a rather extreme metaphor for the sexual experience of young Moroccan women.

When my novel was published, I insisted on doing a book tour around Morocco, to present my book in several of the country s cities. I visited bookshops, universities and libraries. I accepted invitations from charities

Leila Slimani is the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny, one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year, for which she became the first Moroccan woman to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt. Her first novel, Adèle, about a sex-addicted woman in Paris, won the La Mamounia Prize for the best book by a Moroccan author written in French and gave rise to Sex and Lies. A journalist and frequent commentator on women's and human rights, Slimani spearheaded a campaign--for which she won the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for women's freedom--to help Moroccan women speak out, as self-declared outlaws, against their country's "unfair and obsolete laws." She is French president Emmanuel Macron's personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture and was ranked #2 on Vanity Fair France's annual list of the Fifty Most Influential French People in the World. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she now lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.

As revealing as Lisa Taddeo s bestseller Three Women, but it has a more urgent political mission. . . . Like Adèle did before it, this slim book of impassioned pleas, and of human impulses that resonate, is one step to more women breaking free.   Evening Standard

Slimani s searing nonfiction debut unearths the deepest and most intimate secrets of a group of women in a culture where sexual autonomy is punished by law. Newsweek

Impassioned . . . a call-to-arms.   Elle

A compassionate and searing examination of women in Morocco and the Arab world. Ms.

Vivid, at times unbearable testimonies . . . In an act of rare humility and generosity, Slimani offers [these women] what they've been deprived of: a space to tell their stories, to exist.   San Francisco Chronicle

Infuriating, heartbreaking stories of the ways in which [women s] desires, happiness, and autonomy have been stunted by a system that denies their validity or very existence. The New York Review of Books

Potent . . . An ensemble portrait of women drawn together through the force of pressures they all face . . . Slimani keeps a light presence in the interviews, not unlike Svetlana Alexievich s conversations with former Soviet women soldiers. John Freeman, Lit Hub

Provocative and disturbing, fervent and moving.   BookPage

Graceful . . . Deft . . . Nuanced and sophisticated . . . An elegant, accentless translation . . . I d read Slimani s 2016 Goncourt Prize winning novel, The Perfect Nanny, experiencing her as a thrillingly precise writer, her observations so sharp they flensed away every flabby stereotype. . . . Slimani has brought that same quality of attention to bear on this book. . . . [She] gives these women their due. Lina Mounzer, The Baffler

Open[s] the eyes of the reader to universal challenges for women . . . You ll learn something or feel