هستيريا

هستيريا (Hysteria) is a 2021 novel by the Tunisian writer Faten Fazaâ, published in Tunis and written -- like her earlier work -- in everyday Tunisian dialect (Derja) rather than classical Arabic. Across seventeen chapters built from interlocking monologues, Fazaâ hands the narration to a range of fictional voices, letting each speak candidly about desire, shame, and the pressures of daily life.

Through these voices and a series of pointed rhetorical questions, the novel interrogates the way a woman's body and worth are bound up with the notion of honor. It offers an intimate view of the inner lives of young Tunisian women and, more broadly, explores female sexuality and desire in the changed social landscape of post-revolution Tunisia, pressing at cultural taboos and questioning inherited norms.

Frank, conversational, and socially engaged, Hysteria is part of a wider movement of contemporary Tunisian fiction written in the spoken language and centered on women's experience. Fazaâ's willingness to voice what usually goes unspoken made her one of the most widely read and discussed novelists of the new Tunisian scene.