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Leila Slimani

Biography

Leila Slimani

Leila Slimani is the bestselling author of THE PERFECT NANNY, one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2018, for which she became the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt. Her first novel, ADÈLE, about a sex-addicted woman in Paris, won the La Mamounia Prize for the best book by a Moroccan author written in French and gave rise to her nonfiction book SEX AND LIES: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World.

A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, Slimani 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.” She is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture and was ranked #2 on Vanity Fair France’s annual list of the Fifty Most Influential French People in the World. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she now lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.

Leila Slimani

Books by Leila Slimani

In the Country of Others
by Leila Slimani - Fiction, Women's Fiction

After World War II, Mathilde leaves France for Morocco to be with her husband, whom she met while he was fighting for the French army. A spirited young woman, she now finds herself a farmer’s wife, her vitality sapped by the isolation, the harsh climate and the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner. But she refuses to be subjugated or confined to her role as mother of a growing family. As tensions mount between the Moroccans and the French colonists, Mathilde’s fierce desire for autonomy parallels her adopted country’s fight for independence.

Adèle
written by Leila Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Adèle appears to have the perfect life: She is a successful journalist in Paris who lives in a beautiful apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But underneath the surface, she is bored --- and consumed by an insatiable need for sex. Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making.

The Perfect Nanny
written by Leila Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic apartment in Paris’s upscale 10th arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau.