Presentation

    Mathilde and Zohra are half-sisters. Their father was an archaeologist. At Zohra’s mother’s death in Africa, he brought back the little girl to live with his French family. As young women Mathilde and Zohra loved the same man, the writer Adam Saint Gilles. One of them was his wife, the other became his mistress. Saint Gilles is long dead but Mathilde’s hatred for Zohra is still as fierce. Scorned, hurt, humiliated, Mathilde was a powerless witness to the passionate love affair between her husband and her half-sister. Zohra, the daughter of the desert, listened only to her heart, with no concern for conventions or morality. She now lives recluse in a small house, illness has confined her to a wheelchair, but she lives for the memory of the time she and Saint Gilles loved each other. Meanwhile, Mathilde resentfully waits for the death of Zohra, the betrayer. Anne is writing a biography of Saint Gilles and boarding with Mathilde. Through her questions, the biographer builds a bridge between the two sisters and cracks the heavy silence they have retreated into. Will Anne succeed in reuniting these two old women who have shared the same father and the same lover ?

Novelist and poet, Vénus Khoury-Ghata is a prolific author. Amongst her published works: Sept Pierres pour la femme adultère (sold into Swedish, Italian and Greek) and Les Obscurcis (laureate of the Poetry Prize of the Académie française 2009).