The Last One

Description

The daughter of Algerian immigrants, Fatima Daas is raised in a home wherelove and sexuality are considered taboo and signs of affection avoided. Livingin the majority-Muslim Clichy-sous-Bois, she often spends more than three hoursa day on public transport to and from the city, where she feels like a touristobserving Parisian manners. She goes from unstable student to maladjustedadult, doing four years of therapy – her longest relationship. As she gainsdistance from her family and comes into her own, she grapples with her attraction to women and how it fits with her religion, which shecontinues to practice. When Nina comes into her life, she doesn’t know exactlywhat she needs but feels that something crucial has been missing. ‘Through fiction, I was able to explore everything that had made me,’ Daas says. ‘Being a woman, but not what was expected of a woman. Being a north African woman, but also French, the only member of the family born in France. Being lesbian, being Muslim. It was almost a luxury for me, through fiction, to make all those identities coexist in my central character. I knew that those identities were in tension and confrontation in society, but for once, through fiction, I felt like I was liberating and reconciling them’