'My ambition is to give back to the women of my blood the power of speech confiscated by their men.'
Badra is a young Berber girl from aNorth African village who is married off to anold man, andbrutally raped on her wedding night. She thinks sexual pleasure exists only for men, until she escapes from her cruel husband to the city. Then she meets a handsome doctor who introduces her to a new world of sexual passion.
L'Amande, written under a pseudonym by a North African woman living in France, reads like an erotic manifesto for modern women who want to break free from the repressive bonds of cultural tradition to unashamedly demand their right to pleasure.
Nedjma, writing under a pseudonym, is a North African Muslim. L'AMANDE is her first book and was published by Plon in France in February 2004
Catherine Millet, author of THE SEXUAL LIFE OF CATHERINE M
Jane Juska, author of A ROUND-HEELED WOMAN
"'The novel is so genuinely artful, so emotionally sincere, that the racy subject matter is eclipsed by its stunning prose.'"
Publishers Weekly
"'Extraordinary ... A window into a closed world ... Highly sensuous and extremely explicit.'"
The Times
"'The first such volume written by a Muslim woman, and, so, it brings to mind other books written by women in which sexual taboos are broken in their own era and their own way ... Catherine Millet...Jane Juska ... Before them, Maguerite Duras, Anais Ninm and "Pauline Reage".'"
Glasgow Herald