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A Saturday in May. Paris.
It’s the eve of the French presidential elections – ‘The Election of the Century’ say the newspaper headlines – and Chaouch, the nation’s first Arab candidate, has victory in his sights. It has been a long campaign, and with his wife Esther and daughter Jasmine by his side, he spends the remaining hours with close advisors in a hotel in Nimes. Much of the dinner table chatter revolves around Jasmine’s boyfriend; Fouad Nerrouche, a well-known actor with the same Algerian origins as her father, who has just publicly endorsed Chaouch’s candidacy. However shallow it may seem, it’s difficult to ignore the influence of celebrity support in this complex and unpredictable race . . .
The same day. Saint-Etienne.
The Nerrouche family is frantically preparing for a grand wedding, and Fouad himself is there to help out. But younger cousin Krim – who has recently lost his job – is becoming increasingly agitated, and no one knows why. As the day goes on, it becomes clear that the cousin’s problems go far deeper than unemployment. Krim has been stealing from a local gang leader and after being discovered, found himself indebted to his powerful cousin, Nazir – Fouad’s brother. Nazir is a very shady figure, and is heavily involved in a dark underworld of crime. Together, their plans will cause Fouad’s two very different worlds to meet in a way no one would have dared to imagine. Within a few hours, the threads start to unravel, and the collision between the destiny of a family and the hopes of a country becomes inevitable.
With the pacing of a thriller, Louatah melds the tense atmosphere of a family saga with the gripping suspense of a political drama into one breathtaking read.
It’s the eve of the French presidential elections – ‘The Election of the Century’ say the newspaper headlines – and Chaouch, the nation’s first Arab candidate, has victory in his sights. It has been a long campaign, and with his wife Esther and daughter Jasmine by his side, he spends the remaining hours with close advisors in a hotel in Nimes. Much of the dinner table chatter revolves around Jasmine’s boyfriend; Fouad Nerrouche, a well-known actor with the same Algerian origins as her father, who has just publicly endorsed Chaouch’s candidacy. However shallow it may seem, it’s difficult to ignore the influence of celebrity support in this complex and unpredictable race . . .
The same day. Saint-Etienne.
The Nerrouche family is frantically preparing for a grand wedding, and Fouad himself is there to help out. But younger cousin Krim – who has recently lost his job – is becoming increasingly agitated, and no one knows why. As the day goes on, it becomes clear that the cousin’s problems go far deeper than unemployment. Krim has been stealing from a local gang leader and after being discovered, found himself indebted to his powerful cousin, Nazir – Fouad’s brother. Nazir is a very shady figure, and is heavily involved in a dark underworld of crime. Together, their plans will cause Fouad’s two very different worlds to meet in a way no one would have dared to imagine. Within a few hours, the threads start to unravel, and the collision between the destiny of a family and the hopes of a country becomes inevitable.
With the pacing of a thriller, Louatah melds the tense atmosphere of a family saga with the gripping suspense of a political drama into one breathtaking read.
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Reviews
[It] gives us race, politics, culture and crime within a vast cast of interlinked characters living the kind of French-Arab lives we rarely read about. Immersive.
This is not the first time that the scenario of a French Arab president has been in a French-language novel - this was also the conceit of Michel Houellebecq's Submission . . . Savages is, however, a far superior book, having more in common with the complex and crafted plotting of The Sopranos or The Wire than the arch, sarcasm of Houellebecq's dystopia. [Louatah] promises no happy ending to the tensions that still plague France , but the book manages to thrill and entertain, while never losing the sharp political edge that also makes it important.
Louatah's exhilarating four-volume epic holds up a mirror to modern France. Funny, clever and brutal . . . he is a name to watch . . . addictive . . . We can hope that Savages isn't the last word he's got to say on France.
It's an absorbing set-up, not least because Louatah brilliantly conveys the anarchy and chaos of a wedding party in which both sets of families consider the other beneath them
Exhilarating, sharp-edged, and complex, this is a compelling hybrid of family saga and socio-political thriller.
Non-Francophone readers will have to endure the agony associated with waiting for the next season to arrive.
