RaveQatara (GERM)With persuasive openness [the protagonist] calls out her health issues (bad asthma and allergies) and introduces her family. In just a few brushstrokes she paints a vivid portrait of her mother who, as a traditional Muslim female is tethered for life to her \'kingdom\' (the kitchen), while her father runs a tight ship, tolerates no dissent and beats his three daughters with a belt ... A key feature of Fatima Daas\' outstanding literary style is limiting herself to straightforward statements and simple sentences. She distributes her pieces of information so cleverly that the text remains engaging and open at every point. Daas works with the conflicts that define her main protagonist, but reveals experiences and insights that show that the narrator has a firm grip on the strands of the story at all times ... Fatima Daas has written a novel that—in a piercing, insistent rhythm, but not without poetic qualities—describes the life of a young woman whose feelings lurch between doubt and aversion but who also discovers her own potential for great passion. The result is a refreshingly topical portrait rendered beautifully from the original French ... The clear, concise sentences allow us as readers to sense the protagonist’s inner turmoil on each and every page and keep us in suspense until the very end.