pious sobriety, and devout Islamism. But now the time has come for him to find a suitable apartment in the trendiest neighborhood in Paris, for aperitifs at the Deux Magots and the Café de Flore, for shopping sprees at the most exclusive boutiques in Paris. And for a sex life free of prohibitions! Thus his adventures begin. Unfortuntely for him, but to the delight of the reader, his story is filtered through a rather unsympathetic female narrator who refuses to show our hero the attention he feels he deserves. The results are amusing, bizarre, and increasingly delusional. This exhilarating novel about traditions and modernity, obligation and emancipation, speaks to what it means to live in a society where cultures and ideologies often clash. With this portrait of a man balanced between two worlds–one in which heis both liberated and successful, the other in which he is conditioned by religion, family, and a hilariously overbearing mother–Leïla Marouane establishes herself as an original and talented chronicler of modern man's maladies and taboos.

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