Location: France

Nina Bouraoui

Nina Bouraoui (Rennes, 1967) is at the forefront of Francophone North African writing. She spent most of her childhood in Algeria and returned to France in 1980. She studied in Paris where she has been since. Her work has been critically acclaimed. Her early novel La Voyeuse interdite won the Prix du Livre Inter in 1991. In 2005, her book Mes Mauvaises Pensées was awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot and in 2020 her book Otages received the Prix Anaïs Nin.

Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, who is an award-winning translator who translates mostly literary fiction from French. Her translation of Nina Bouraoui’s All Men Want to Know (2021) was the recipient of a PEN Translates Award and her translation of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho (2021) was the winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Other authors she has translated include Tahar Ben Jelloun, Vénus Khoury-Ghata and Ali Zamir. Her work has also appeared in Words Without Borders and Asymptote.

Books by this author:

Satisfaction

Nina Bouraoui