Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

In Leïla Marouane's novels Le châtiment des hypocrites (The Punishment of the Hypocrites, 2001) and La vie sexuelle d'un islamiste à Paris (The Sex Life of an Islamist in Paris, 2007), the portrayal of Algerian immigrant characters in France represents an intersection of literature, medical discourse, and sociological critique. The texts, which use fragmented narrative and humor, and which focus on the centrality of the marked body, show how fiction can represent the mental and physical unraveling that goes along with the failure of integration in France. In the two novels, mental illness estranges characters from themselves and others, and from the coherence of narrative, emphasizing the pessimistic view that while efforts at de-inscription are a form of physical and psychological escape, they are also symptoms of a failure of integration that marks these 21st-century characters as descendants of earlier postcolonial novels. Marouane's novels suggest that the only possible response to racism, sexism, and xenophobia is an escalation of violence and an eventual break with reality. The pathologization of this behavior is a creative, but ultimately deeply cynical exploration of contemporary French immigration and society.