Discretion

Yamina Taleb is approaching her seventieth birthday. These days, she strives for a quiet life, grateful to the country that hosts her and her adored family. The closest she gets to drama is scooping 'revolutionary' bargains in the form of plastic kitchenware gadgets. But Yamina's children feel differently about life in Paris. They don't always fit in, and it hurts. Omar wonders whether it's too late to change course as he watches the world pass him by from the driver's seat of his Uber. His sisters are tired of having to prove themselves and their allegiance to a place that is at once home, and not. When the Talebs go away together on holiday - not to the motherland, but to a villa-with-pool rental near the Atlantic coast - they come to realise just how strongly family defines our sense of belonging. Moving between Algeria and Paris, Discretion touchingly evokes the realities of a first- and second-generation family as they carve out a future for themselves in France, finding one another as they go along.

This edition was translated to English in 2023.