THE LAST ONE: A Novel
by Fatima Daas
Translated by Lara Vergnaud
Other Press. 193 pages, $15.99
FATIMA DAAS’ The Last One follows the journey of the last daughter of Algerian parents who settled in France before her birth. In Algerian Arabic, Fatima is the mazoziya, the last one, the youngest of three daughters. Unlike her sisters, Fatima was born to parents who desperately wanted a son. Throughout this incantatory narrative, Daas presents us with a fragmented character who struggles to reconcile her attraction to women with her Islamic faith. She also seeks to incorporate recognition of her lesbianism into her fraught relationship with her Muslim mother. Daas employs a classic autofictional technique in this novel, using the author’s name to identify the narrator. In an added literary twist, “Fatima Daas” is the author’s nom de plume.
Daas rejects the easy answers and redemptive integration often offered by the conventional coming of age, coming out, or woman artist novel
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Anne Charles lives in Montpelier, VT. With her partner and a friend, she co-hosts the cable-access show All Things LGBTQ.
