extraits du résumé du roman - éd. de l'Aube/1993

Two lost teenagers, Nadjim and Marina, madly in love, live from robberies, drugs and misery in the north of Paris. A day-to-day existence, wedged between birth and death. Suddenly, a burst of light erupts: Marina is expecting a baby. Mounsi, child of the suburbs, speaks of his world with desperate tenderness, served by an intense, sober, clean writing, which refuses, like his heroes, any compromise. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Yseult..., Nadjim and Marina is a drama of today, or a fable of forever, Mounsi will not be able to save his tragic lovers, despite all the desire they have.

Mounsi, born in 1951 in Kabylie grew up on "rue de la Folie" in Nanterre... "La cendre des villes" is his second novel, published in 1993. He is also a singer-songwriter. By recounting the misery of his family, he escapes this fatality that he tirelessly stalks. The ash of cities is an authentic novel, fascinating in its sweetness, its magic, its truth. This is very rare.

Assia Djebar