L'Amande

'My ambition is to give back to the women of my blood the power of speech confiscated by their men.' Badra is a young girl from a traditional North African Berber village fascinated with the sensuous mystery of her own body. Grim reality intervenes when she ismarried off to a much older man, andbrutally raped on her wedding night. It is enough to convince her that sexual pleasure exists only for men and, by extension, is a woman's burden. Years after utter desperation has driven Badra to escape from her cruel husband to the city, a handsome doctor appears in her life. Driss teaches Badra to love her own body, and introduces her to a world of sexual passion that she had never imagined. But as her dependence on him intensifies so do Driss's demands, and suddenly Badra is faced with a manipulative lover forcing her into increasingly degrading sexual acts. Fighting against her urge to submit, Badramust escape this man if she is ever to rediscover her self-esteem. L'Amande, written under a pseudonym by a North African woman living in France, reads like an erotic manifesto for modern women who want to break free from the repressive bonds of cultural tradition to unashamedly demand their right to pleasure.

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