La nuit sacrée

On the night her father dies, a young Moroccan woman learns the truth that shaped her whole life: born a daughter to a man desperate for a male heir, she was raised as a boy named Ahmed, her true gender hidden from everyone.

Freed at last, she reclaims herself as Zahra and walks out into a Morocco that is half real and half dream — finding tenderness with a blind man known as the Consul, and cruelty, imprisonment, and vengeance along the way. Tahar Ben Jelloun's Prix Goncourt-winning novel, the luminous and brutal sequel to The Sand Child.