“Watch Us Dance” is a tale of rebellion and repression, love and its betrayal
Leïla Slimani’s new novel, the second in a planned trilogy, really takes off when Aïcha goes home to Morocco after four years of study. “Watch Us Dance” picks up the tale of Amine and Mathilde Belhaj, Aïcha’s parents, whose Franco-Moroccan love story featured in Ms Slimani’s previous work, “”. Now, Amine’s farm has prospered. Mathilde, lonely and tired of his infidelity, is fixated on the construction of a swimming pool.
This collision of cultures and expectations, as well as the hidden family dramas that unfold, make this novel one of Ms Slimani’s most ambitious yet. In France, skirts are short and hopes are high. Aïcha flies back to Morocco dressed in knee-high brown leather boots and an orange vinyl jacket. She feels a fool. Home brings both comfort and hostility. She leaves for the Moroccan coast to join a friend, encounter Marxism and, at last, fall in love herself.
Translated into English by Sam Taylor, this is a story about rebellion and repression, belonging and appearance, love and its betrayal. It is infused with a raw earthiness. The skin of villagers “smelled of cumin and charcoal”. A “gigantic metal claw” tears into the ground to build Mathilde’s pool. Amine contemplates the soil of his farm, and his relatives who lie buried beneath it.
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