Leïla Slimani

Leïla Slimani (born 3 October 1981) is a French-Moroccan writer and journalist. She is also a French diplomat in her capacity as the personal representative of the French president Emmanuel Macron to the ''Organisation internationale de la Francophonie''. In 2016, she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for her novel '' Chanson douce''.

Life

Slimani's maternal grandmother Anne Dhobb (née Ruetsch; 1921–2016) grew up in Alsace. In 1944, she met her future husband Lakhdar Dhobb, a Moroccan colonel in the French Colonial Army, during the liberation of France. After the war she followed him back to Morocco, where they lived in Meknes. Anne Dhobb's autobiographical novel was published in 2003; she became the first writer in the family. Her daughter (Slimani's mother) is Béatrice-Najat Dhobb-Slimani, an otolaryngologist, who married the French-educated Moroccan economist Othman Slimani. The couple had three daughters; Leïla Slimani is the middle one.

Leïla was born in Rabat on 3 October 1981; she grew up in a liberal, French-speaking household and attended French schools. An important rupture in Slimani's childhood occurred in 1993 when her father was falsely implicated in a finance scandal and fired from his position as president of the CIH Bank (he was later officially exonerated.).

Slimani left Morocco at the age of 17 for Paris to study political science and media studies at the Sciences Po and ESCP Europe. After her graduation, she temporarily considered a career as an actress, completing an acting course and appearing in supporting roles in two films. She married her husband, a Parisian banker, Antoine d’Engremont, whom she first met in 2005, on 24 April 2008 and started to work as a journalist for the magazine ''Jeune Afrique'' in October of that year. The work required much travel. After her son was born in 2011 and she was arrested in Tunisia while reporting on the Arab Spring, she decided to quit her job at ''Jeune Afrique'' to pursue freelance work and write a novel instead. The novel, however, was rejected by publishers. In 2013, Slimani took a writing workshop by Jean-Marie Laclavetine, a novelist and editor at Gallimard. He took an interest in Slimani's writing and helped her improve her style; in 2014, Slimani published her first novel ''Dans le jardin de l’ogre'' ("In the Garden of the Ogre" - in English translation, "Adèle") with Gallimard. The novel fared well with French critics and received the La Mamounia literary award in Morocco. Two years later she followed up with the psychological thriller ''Chanson douce'', which won the Prix Goncourt and turned her into a literary star in France, and made her known to international audiences as well. In 2017, her second child, a daughter, was born.

In addition to her native Moroccan citizenship, Slimani also holds French citizenship due to her Alsatian heritage. In 2017, she was made an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Since 2021, she has been living in Lisbon, Portugal.

In August 2022, she was announced as the chair of judges for the International Booker Prize 2023.

Work

Politics

On 6 November 2017 the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, appointed Leila Slimani his personal representative to the ''Organisation internationale de la Francophonie''.

Fiction

''Adèle''

Slimani's first novel ''Dans le jardin de l’ogre'', published in English as ''Adèle'', tells the story of a woman who loses control of her life due to her sexual addiction. Slimani got the idea for her story after seeing the Dominique Strauss-Kahn unfolding news. The novel fared well with French critics; in Morocco it received the La Mamounia literary award.

''Lullaby/The Perfect Nanny''

'' Chanson douce'' (lit. "sweet song") is the story of a double murder of two young siblings by their nanny, inspired by the killing by a nanny of the Krim children in Manhattan in 2012. The novel starts off with the immediate aftermath of the murder with the opening line of "The baby is dead", and then recounts the backstory of the parents, a liberal, upper middle class Parisian couple, as well as their nanny, who is economically and psychologically struggling. Slimani named the nanny Louise after Louise Woodward, a British au pair in the US who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter of the toddler in her care. The novel was well received by French critics. It quickly turned into a bestseller, with over 76,000 copies printed within three months even before the book was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2016. It subsequently became the most read book in France that year with over 450,000 copies printed; by the end of 2017 around 600,000 copies had been sold in France. It has been translated into 18 languages, with 17 more to come; the English translation (by Sam Taylor) of her novel was published in 2018 as ''The Perfect Nanny'' in the US and as ''Lullaby'' in the UK. In 2019, ''Lullaby'' won a British Book Award in the "Début Book of the Year" category.

''Le pays des autres''

''Le pays des autres'', lit. "The country of the others" (at Gallimard, 2020), a first novel in a trilogy about the writer's own family, deals with the life of Slimani's maternal grandparents during Morocco's period of decolonisation in the 1950s. The second volume in the trilogy, ''Regardez-nous danser'' (lit. "Look at us dance"), was published in 2022, and the third, ''J'emporterai le feu'', in January 2025.

Non-fiction

Slimani worked for several years as a journalist reporting on Northern Africa and the Maghreb, covering, among other things, the Arab Spring in 2011.

Her book ''Sexe et Mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle au Maroc'' ("Sex and Lies: Sex Life in Morocco") compiles the accounts of many women she had interviewed while on a book tour throughout Morocco.

''La baie de Dakhla : itinérance enchantée entre mer et désert'' describes a region of Morocco on the Atlantic where people are going through a period of transition between traditional life and modernity.

Books

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*:English edition: ''Adele: A Novel'', translated by Sam Taylor, Penguin, 2019
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*:US edition:
*:UK edition:
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*''Sexe et mensonges : La vie sexuelle au Maroc''. Les Arènes, Paris, 2017
*:UK edition:
*''Paroles d'honneur''. Les Arènes, Paris, 2017, , illustrated by Laetitia Coryn
*''Le pays des autres''. Gallimard, March 2020, , in French
*:UK edition: ''The country of others''. Translated by Sam Taylor. Faber & Faber. 2022.
*:US edition: ''In the country of others''. Penguin Books. 2022.
*''Regardez-nous danser''. Gallimard, February 2022, , in French
*:UK edition: ''Watch Us Dance''. Translated by Sam Taylor. Faber & Faber. 2024.
*''J'emporterai le feu''. Gallimard, January 2025, , in French

References

External links

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''Leïla Slimani : rencontre avec la romancière de l’ultramoderne solitude des femmes''
- Interview with Slimani (French)
''NPR stories about Leila Slimani''''Leila Slimani''
- BBC interview (audio, 9 mins)
for a Crime''
- Opening Speech of the 21st international literature festival berlin

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slimani, Leïla
1981 births
Living people
21st-century French novelists
21st-century French women writers
21st-century Moroccan women writers
French women novelists
Moroccan women novelists
Moroccan novelists
Writers from Rabat
Prix Goncourt winners
Sciences Po alumni
Moroccan critics of religions
Moroccan feminists
Alumni of Lycée Descartes (Rabat)
ESCP Business School alumni
Cours Florent alumni
Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres