Tomboy

"Bouraoui's quiet and inwardly focused coming-of-age novel delves deeply into intimate questions of self-definition—and ultimately the urge to become a writer."—Publishers Weekly

“Reminiscent of Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, Bouraoui’s phrasing and pace are bold and naïve at the same time, much like a teenage girl. . . . Translators Marjorie Attignol Salvodon and Jehanne-Marie Gavarini have done a superb job of making Nina’s voice ring authentically high and low, shrill and profound. A beautiful and moving book, Tomboy is entirely worthy of its comparison to Duras.”—ForeWord

Praise for the original French Garçon manqué: “Painful, enlightening, fascinating, impossible, yet very real. . . . It is these visceral feelings experienced by almost everyone of double nationality that Nina Bouraoui so masterfully expresses through her highly sensual and incantatory writing. In the beginning of a twenty-first-century world of demographic upheaval, exile, and thousands of children born of mixed race, many can relate to Bouraoui’s struggles; thus the universal appeal of Garçon manqué in spite of its French-Algerian context.”—Melissa Marcus, World Literature Today

“Nina Bouraoui is by all accounts one of the most compelling of today’s young French writers. The publication of her best-known work, Tomboy, is timely, as are its themes of French-Algerian biculturalism and trans-gender identity. Salvodon and Gavarini have rendered Bouraoui’s intense, hypnotic and breathless style with admirable skill.”—Isabelle de Courtivron, professor of French studies and director of the Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Studies at MIT

"Tomboy is a welcome first translation of Bouraoui's work. . . . The translators have made a fine novel fully accessible to readers of English."

—Brian Thompson, Women in French Studies