In the Country of Others

A passionate interracial love story between a French woman whose fierce desire for autonomy parallels colonial Morocco's fight for independence and a Moroccan soldier who fought for France in World War II is told in this award-winning, #1 internationally bestselling new novel by the author of The Perfect Nanny.

The world of plants and the world of mankind are identical. One species eventually triumphs over another. Eventually, the orange will triumph over the lemon, or the other way around, and the tree will provide edible fruit once again.

During World War II, Mathilde, a lively young Frenchwoman, falls in love with Amine, a good-looking Moroccan soldier serving in the French army. The pair moves to Morocco after the war. While Amine works to manage the difficult terrain of his family farm, Mathilde thinks that the lack of money, the severe environment, the solitude, and the hostility she incites as a foreigner are stealing away her energy. After being reduced to a farmer's wife and experiencing increasing isolation as she raises her two children in a world with rules she does not understand—her daughter being teased by wealthy French girls for her unkempt hair and worn-out clothes at school—Matilde eventually overcomes these social mores and defies the nation's chauvinism by providing medical care to the rural populace.

Amine finds himself caught in the middle as hostilities between the French colonists and the Moroccans rise: he is a landowner who supports his Moroccan employees but is also hated by the French and is married to a Frenchwoman; he is proud of his wife's tenacity but embarrassed by her refusal to submit. All of them—especially the women who are compelled to live in the realm of men—are foreigners, and Leïla Slimani's book marks the beginning of their liberation.