In Conversation

This week we spoke to Leïla Slimani about Morocco, love letters and the inspiration behind her seductive new novel, Watch Us Dance.

Interviewed by Nancy Adimora

NA: I’d love for us to start this conversation in Morocco, where it all started - can you briefly walk us through your childhood and where the writing seed was planted. 

LS: I was very, very young when I decided to become a writer. When I was like seven or eight, I was reading all the time, and my grandmother was telling me a lot of stories. My parents were also great admirers of writers and I think that, for them, there was no better life than the life of a writer. At the time, I wanted to please them so much. I had this idea that they would be so happy if I became a writer, that they would admire my life. So very, very young, I decided to be a writer. 

The way I was reading was also very weird. When I was a child, when I was reading a book, I felt like I was in the book. I felt like I was becoming each one of the characters - it was something really strong for me, a very strong feeling. So yeah, maybe I felt that life in books is even better and more interesting than real life.

NA: Going back to your parents and their interest in writers, I’m interested to know where their admiration stemmed from - particularly as the dominant narrative around “African parents” is that they typically push us to pursue specific corporate careers.

LS: You know, to be honest, I wonder whether my parents sacrificed their desire to become artists to be a doctor (my mother) and a banker (my father). When they became adults, they probably considered that it was a shame to sacrifice individual desires for security. So they gave me the chance that they didn't give to themselves. 

But I totally agree with you, and I think it's a pity that we don't give enough importance and enough confidence to children who want to become artists, probably because we come from countries where the governments in general don't invest in culture, and it's also very difficult to economically have a good life when you are an artist. But it's a fight that’s worth fighting. As African artists, we should try to transmit that to the next generation and tell them that a country cannot develop and cannot find its place in the world without musicians, writers, comedians, filmmakers. I think it's a very interesting point.

NA: Watch Us Dance is your 4th novel, and most established authors will say that every novel is different and requires something different from them. What stood out to you as the main difference and challenge with this novel? 

LS: You know, I see a big difference between the reception of my first two books, Adele and Lullaby which are both set in France with French characters, and my latest trilogy. I can feel that, for a lot of Western commentators and critics, they ask themselves: why would she want to write about this small African country that we don't really care about if she's able to speak about us, if she's able to speak about Western women? Why would she bother to write about Morocco? I can feel that there is a certain contempt towards the story of my country, and our continent in general. There’s still this idea that a European novel with European characters is more universal than a story with characters whose names are Mohamed or Aisha. It's still very difficult for Western people to identify with those characters, although it's very easy for us to identify with Mary or Katherine, or whatever. 

I feel that maybe African artists are much more cosmopolitan than Western artists, in that we have this ability to adapt to any situation. We know them, but they don't know us, so maybe our work now is to fight against this inhibition and feeling that people won’t be interested in reading stories about our countries. We often ask who will read a story about Morocco, and who will find it interesting, but a French author or a British author would never ask himself or herself that kind of question. So with this book I wanted to convince myself that, of course, the story of a country like Morocco is as interesting as the story of France.

NA: I love that answer so much. And sticking with the idea of writing about Morocco, in a recent review the Financial Times said “there is a palpable love of land and people, and a pride that can be felt through the author’s tone.” How much do you resonate with what they said, and to what extent would you say that your writing is a love letter to Morocco?

LS: It is a love letter to Morocco, but it’s the kind of love letter I would write to a man who will never love me as much as I love him. It's a love letter to someone that I'm not living with anymore. It's like you had a big, big love story, but then you broke up and you still think about the days and nights you spent with this guy that you still love very much, and you know that you will never experience another love story like this one. So yes, it is a love letter, but with certain melancholy and a certain despair.

NA: Hmmm. That makes perfect sense. In a recent Vogue piece, you said “it's impossible to tell the story of Morocco without employing sensuality” - this idea of sensuality struck me as soon as I started reading this book, and dance also plays a central role in this book. I was interested to know why you were keen to fuse these elements into the story?

LS: For two reasons, probably the first one would be because Morocco is a country of my childhood, so it's the country where I had the first experience of everything - the first experience of smell, of tasting, of feeling, of tenderness. So this is the first experience of my body. So for me, everything that is related to Morocco has to do with sensuality, because it comes from my own body. But also because there’s a paradox. In Morocco, we live in a quite conservative society, especially when you are a woman. You can't really do whatever you want with your body - you can’t show your body and there are a lot of restrictions, but at the same time, it is a culture that gives a lot of importance to colours, to smells, to feelings, to taste. This is a paradox because of the fact that we hide ourselves, so we have to find another way to feel and to sense, and maybe because of this paradox, we are even more aware of the importance of sensuality than people from the West. For them, it's usual, it's easy - but for us, it's something that we have to fight for, that we have to find. So yeah, sensuality is really a part of Moroccan culture and especially when you’re a woman. Moroccan women spend a lot of time together. We cook together, we eat together, we go to the hammam so we wash one another, we take each other in our arms, so a lot of our interactions are about the body. 

NA: I'm currently reading the English version, translated from French by Sam Taylor. What’s the translation process like for you, particularly as somebody who also speaks English? When you read the English version, does it feel like a different story? 

LS: You know, I'm very lucky because I'm very close to my translator and he’s translated all my work, so he knows my style very well. We have a sort of intimacy where we share a lot, and when he has a question, or when he's not sure about something, we can have a very long discussion about a very specific problem that he found in a chapter or in a page. Translation is difficult and challenging, but it's very important for the writer and the translator to have a good relationship and to be able to build a dialogue.

I also have to say that Sam is a very curious writer. He wanted to learn more about Morocco and he wanted to be really precise, when he was describing an emotion or, as we said, translating this idea of sensuality. So yeah, it took us a lot of time, a lot of dialogue, but I'm really proud of the translation. And I think he really managed to capture the essence of what I was trying to do.

NA: You mentioned Watch Us Dance being a part of the trilogy, and it’s the second book in that trilogy. So as you turn your attention to the third book in the series, I’d love to know your writing process. Can you share your approach? 

LS: I work all the time. I wake up at 5:30 every morning, and I begin at 6. At 6 I begin by reading, I read like 10-15 pages of a book, then I stop and I sit at my office. I always write by hand first, and I take a lot of notes - about ideas, things I heard the day before, anecdotes, anything - and then I begin to write my novel. Sometimes nothing comes, but I don't move - I stay in my office until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and then I have a nap. Very often I watch a movie to relax, to be somewhere else so I can stop thinking of my book for like two hours or three hours, and then I go back to my office and start writing again.

So for me, it's really about discipline and being focused on my subject. I need it to become a real obsession and to think about my characters all the time. So I kind of live in another dimension - I'm here but I'm not really here.

NA: And if you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring author, what would it be?

LS: I would say never think of your mother and never think of Marcel Proust. He’s considered the best writer of all time in France. So I always tell young writers to never think about Marcel Proust and their mothers. Don't try to please anyone, just do what you want to do and write what you want to write. 

Leïla Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which she won for Lullaby. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she lives in Portugal.

You can read an excerpt of Watch Us Dance here.