‘Love always sits in a seat other than the one we were expecting it to, right alongside the place where we expected love to be’

In the midst of the Algerian civil war, Hayat is a young novelist trapped in a loveless marriage. While her husband, a high-ranking officer, preoccupies himself with politics, Hayat finds freedom from her highly regimented life in the world of her writing. There she weaves a passionate story for her characters. But the line between fiction and reality blurs when she falls for a man who seems to have walked straight out of the pages of her notebook, a man who seduces her, instead of her heroine, with his silence.

As love on paper becomes a forbidden love lived out in the dark corners of a broken city, Hayat’s country convulses with political upheaval. In a place where those who dare to write the truth are made to pay a heavy price, she and her characters will discover that no one can truly be the author of their own destiny.

The second novel in the international bestselling trilogy from ‘the literary phenomenon’ (Elle), Ahlem Mosteghanemi, Chaos of the Senses is a powerful story of love, identity and liberation.

Translated by: Nancy Roberts