Oroppa

Salomé Abergel, an established Jewish Moroccan artist and former political dissident, goes missing at the height of her career. A group of outcasts, all of them from migrant backgrounds, become involved in her mysterious disappearance. Hind el Arian, part-time waitress and full-time stoner, finds herself guarding Salomé’s paintings in her absence. Irad Abergel, Salomé’s son and the owner of a bar in Paris, is haunted by his mother’s past. And Yousef Slaoui, also known as The Pilgrim, arrives in Europe and tries to come to terms with his actions as an infamous interrogator in Morocco’s clandestine prisons during the Years of Lead.

We travel from Salomé’s deserted house in Amsterdam to Paris, Tunis, Cairo, and Casablanca. It’s a dazzling joyride through coffee shops, laundrettes and bars, crisscrossing the territory of the 21st arrondissement – a mythical place that cannot be pinpointed on any map. Polyphonic, splendidly human and thrillingly alive, Oroppa is an electrifying quest novel by a bold new talent that lifts the lid on a covert world. It’s a head-spinning, labyrinthine tale spanning the post-colonial histories of North Africa and Europe that makes us rethink what it means to be European.

Rights
Peters Frasers + Dunlop
Lisette Verhagen
lverhagen@pfd.co.uk