Barrytown/StationHill Publishing

Nina Bouraoui grew up in a liberal university milieu, completely unlike the one she describes in Forbidden Vision. Because of the strength of her memories, both good and bad, of her years spent in Algeria, and her own Algerian roots, she wanted her first novel to be about that country. Eager to portray Algerian society and character as she describes them—“boiling,” “dangerous,” “exciting”—she acknowledges the difficulty of being a woman in Algeria though she emphasizes that the story is not directly autobiographical, but consists of a composite of stories heard. Bouraoui tells of the extreme sexual tensions felt by both women and men in Algeria because of the segregation of the sexes and their respective roles, still dictated to a great degree by traditional norms. Other main themes include the lack of communication between human beings, solitude, and the resulting suffering of both men and women.

For Bouraoui, style and the craft of writing are pungently important. Her care in evoking very particular colors, sensations, odors, fragrances, moods, and feelings is evident in the energetic play of language, striking images and deliberate exaggeration. Speaking of her writing, she says: “I am a female voyeur; nothing escapes me, neither odors, colors, or breaths. I steal certain details from reality and propel them into another reality: that of my characters. Words and wrongs surround me, I need only hold out my hand to seize them. An author is a character with two faces. I oscillate between the true and false, between reality and illusion.”