Description
Lullaby meets Little Fires Everywhere in this subtly brutal, suspenseful prize-winning novel inspired by a true story. It asks the question: how can a seemingly normal person commit the most atrocious of crimes? And how well can you ever know someone?
About the Author
Samira Sedira is a novelist, playwright and actress who was born in Algeria and moved to France with her family as a young girl. In 2008, after two decades of acting for film and the stage, she became a cleaning woman, an experience that filtered into the events of this book. People Like Them is her first novel to be translated into English. Lara Vergnaud is an award-winning translator who specializes in North African literature.
Reviews
[A] taut examination of race and class based on a shocking real-life case ... Sedira lays bare the perils of a callous society dominated by money and status, and the insidious racism that drives an ordinary man to murder. There are no monsters, she claims, "only humans" -- Lucy Popescu * Observer *
People Like Them is disturbing and powerful. It explores the topics of racism and jealousy in a very subtle way. I loved it -- Leila Slimani
Chilling ... Sparse, taut ... In this gripping tale, told through courtroom re-enactments and flashbacks, Sedira digs underneath the skin of the casual racism that is key to the crime * Independent *
Unsettling ... A complex and nuanced account of how entitlement and resentment, built up over many years, can turn a sense of injustice into disproportionate, murderous fury -- Laura Wilson * Guardian *
Sedira packs a powerful punch, exploring the class-race divide ...The graphic murders stand in stark contrast to Sedira's subtle accounting of Constant's tortured path ... Deeply unsettling yet compulsively readable * Kirkus *
Taut, tense ... Cunningly keeps our sympathies shifting * Telegraph *
The air of danger is sharp and pervasive ... [It has] all the ingredients for explosion: humiliation, envy, racism, rancour and self-pity ... In her translation Lara Vergnaud handles the tension with exemplary restraint * TLS *
Will have you up all night with the lights on * Elle *
A tense and gripping exploration of race and class * Big Issue North *
Icy and chilling, People Like Them is an investigation both of a crime and of the society that nurtured it. The novel's precise, vivid writing brings to mind two other knock-outs from France, The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrere and Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan. In sharply drawn sentences, Sedira summons the beauty of a small French village, and the shocking acts of the people inside it -- Flynn Berry
Dark and unsettling and brilliantly concise ... I'll be thinking about it for a long time -- Jane Casey
Perfectly executed, and prize-worthy * La Marseilleise *
Unflinching. Every word in this crisply told story matters, and every seemingly-casual moment is laced with dread, daring you to look away. You won't -- Ani Katz
Mesmerising ... As compulsive and unsettling as Lullaby and Little Fires Everywhere * Culture Whisper *
Book Information
ISBN 9781526638601
Author Samira Sedira
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Raven Books
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 224g