Tunis blues

When summer burns down to ashes, Tunis catches the blues and the whole city sounds like an out-of-tune piano. Over the course of one such season, Ali Bécheur weaves together the lives of a handful of Tunisois who were never meant to meet: Ismaïl, a solitary, exacting judge exasperated by his fellow citizens' hypocrisies; Choucha, a free-thinking journalist; and Jamel — "Jimmy" — a restless dandy and night bird chasing adventure.

Around a string of luxury cars set ablaze in the wealthy neighborhoods of the capital, their paths cross and tangle, drawing in improbable loves: Lola the kind-hearted fortune teller, and Elyssa, the ardent young bourgeoise. Part crime story, part study of manners, the novel listens to a society caught between the weight of tradition and a thirst for freedom.

Written in a supple, jazz-inflected French by one of the essential voices of Tunisian literature, Tunis blues is a five-voiced portrait of a modern city and country — its longings, contradictions, and uneasy relationship with liberty — played at the tempo of a blues.