Leïla Slimani

About Mathilde:

1946. The young, French, Mathilde falls head over heels for Amine, a Moroccan officer of the French army. They get married and leave for a secluded family farm, hours from Rabat. How can their love, which is constantly being tested, stand the test of time?

Mathilde is the first part of the ‘The Land of the Others’-trilogy. The story was based on her family history and entered the French bestseller charts at number one.

Leila Slimani (Morocco, 1981) is the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny, winner of the Prix Goncourt, and Adèle, for which she won the La Mamounia Prize.

Sex and Lies, a bundle of true stories of women’s intimate lives in the Arab world, was nominated for the Prix Renaudot de l’essai.

A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she spearheaded a campaign–for which she won the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for women’s freedom–to help Moroccan women speak out, as self-declared outlaws, against their country’s “unfair and obsolete laws.” Slimani wants to contribute to the development of a free society with equal rights for men and women.

She is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she now lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.