About

I write novels about family, land, memory, and the arrangements families make with silence.

My first novel, The Woman from Nowhere, is a detective story set in a gorge in the Kabylie mountains, where a young woman is found dead with nothing on her but a note in Italian. I wrote it to golden-age rules: every clue the reader needs is on the page, in the order the detective finds it.

The Land We Leave Behind came out of a single document, an acte de tanazul, the deed by which a daughter renounces her share of the family land. It is a family story in which no one is a villain and everything is at stake.

Worth the Paperwork is a romantic comedy, and the only one of the three set nowhere near home: a small invented country where citizens file their heartbreak on standard forms, in triplicate. Iris Halloway has spent six years behind the counter stamping other people's complaints, and then one man starts coming back every week to complain about the same woman. I wrote it about the complaints people file instead of saying what they mean.

I write in Arabic first, then rewrite the book in English myself. I do not think of that as translation so much as writing it a second time, in another language, with the same spirit. It is slower, and it is the work closest to my heart. I publish the books myself, from Abu Dhabi.

If you want to know when the next one is out, Amazon will tell you before I do. You can follow me there.

You can write to me at contact@ilhembelkherchouche.com. I read everything, and I answer most of it.