What the Day Owes the Night

"The story in this book is very simple. It’s a love story between Emilie, a French girl living in Algeria and Younes, who calls himself Jonas, to pass off as a more European person among his friends. He falls in love with her, but then, with the fight for independence, he’s torn between his native roots and world that’s exploited and this European way of life. He really is torn apart. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book. Yasmina Khadra writes beautifully, very simply. He’s underappreciated, I think. He uses a female name because he used to be a general in the army, so he was not allowed to write—he had the duty of reserve, as they call it. So he took his wife’s name, and as a tribute, he decided to keep it. He’s written over 30 novels. He’s a global phenomenon: we all know Yasmina Khadra. But a lot of snobs out there do not want to acknowledge him, because the moment you reach commercial success, you’re good to be hated. I know what it takes to write, and I have a huge amount of respect for him. His stories are spectacular. And, as a person, I was blessed to meet him. He’s a very warm, lovely person. He is one of the key contemporary writers in Algeria. We have great writers. Algerian writers are able to see the world as an open land. They’re not closed off. It’s quite remarkable that a boy born in the 1950s, under the French colonial system, managed to become such an amazing writer. It takes a lot of courage, actually. So I’m a huge admirer of Yasmina Khadra."