Bookforum talks with Fatima Daas about her debut novel, which covers coming of age in a Paris banlieue
In many ways, Fatima Daas’s new novel, The Last One (translated by Lara Vergnaud), appears to be autobiographical. The character bears the author’s name (a pseudonym) and is also a young Clichoise who spends three hours commuting on public transportation to get to the city center from the far-flung suburbs. As a teen, she has a Harriet the Spy–like tendency to observe those on the train, listening to them arguing on the phone or manifesting peculiar laughs. The only member of her Algerian family who was born in France, Fatima struggles to identify with the gendered and religious expectations