A Waltz

Lynda Chouiten (Author), Skyler Artes (Translated by), Mildred Mortimer (Afterword by)

9780813952574

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2025

148 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.232 kg

An important new voice in Algerian literature. . . Une Valse, published in 2019, the year that saw Algeria’s hirak – the massive demonstrations throughout the country that led to the fall of president Abdelaziz Boutiflika – captures the mood of the times. Algerians whose dreams of wider horizons and a freer society had been shattered have now opted for change, cautiously optimistic as they embrace their uncertain future." - Journal of North African Studies

A prize-winning novel from one of Algeria’s rising literary stars

In A Waltz, Lynda Chouiten depicts an irreverent and creative woman with an artistic temperament navigating the stiflingly conservative society in which she was raised. The narrative follows the path of Chahira, a seamstress from El Moudja—a fictional small coastal town in the Kabyle region of Algeria—to an international design competition in Vienna. Along the way, A Waltz expresses the strain of competing value systems, regional identities and expectations, and a cacophony of voices bearing down upon one woman while asking challenging questions about the nature of madness, confinement, and resistance to a patriarchal world.