Universo de Letras 2020

Marie Fenoy is a sixteen-year-old pied-noir living in Oran. The daughter of a bourgeois Parisian mother and a farmer from the Alicante countryside who met in Algeria, she is not considered attractive by contemporary standards due to her slim and unconventional appearance; her way of thinking, like her look, is unique.

In 1913, encouraged by her brother Diego, she sets up a consultation booth in the marketplace, alongside storytellers, babouche sellers, and scribes, offering advice on everyday problems in exchange for whatever people wish to give. Her life changes the day the wealthiest woman in the city is found dead, and her brother is accused. Marie investigates, defends him, and confronts the grumpy, big-nosed Algerian policeman who blames him.

From there, her life unfolds in a torrent of events: World War I, the pain and loss of her mother’s memories, the discovery of sex, the fear of pregnancy, marriage at eighteen, and her flight to Spanish Morocco to prevent her husband from being sent back to the front… Throughout all of this and until the very end of the novel, she continues to question who the real culprit—or culprits—behind that murder are.