Two years after its publication in France (ed. JC Lattès), Mustapha Zem’s autobiographical novel has just been released by a Moroccan publisher. The writer’s first opus, “Les pas perdus” is now available from Editions Le Fennec, with a price more accessible to readers in Morocco. Announcing the news to our editorial staff, Mustapha Zem is delighted. “I have the hope that [ce livre] affects as many people as possible,” confided the Franco-Moroccan author.
This highly sensitive work depicts “the disappointed hopes and disillusionments which mark the journey of immigrants”. It resonates “as a powerful testimony to the quest to belong and the difficulty of finding one’s place, in a world that often seems incomprehensible,” underlines the Moroccan publisher. Le Fennec describes in fact “a moving story which leaves a lasting imprint on the reader”.
Strongly imbued with real facts, the work was published after an accident which turned the life of the author, until then financial director, upside down. In May 2020, a serious fall led him to a coma for five days. Suffering from “no filter syndrome”, he loses his capacity for inhibition for a time. Then begins a long journey through the desert, both professionally and personally. At the end of this ordeal emerged an autobiographical novel, which in turn inspired a feature film (Les Miens) by Mustapha’s brother, director Roschdy Zem.
To get back on track, writing, like film, was an outlet for Mustapha Zem. Previously, he told Yabiladi that he had resumed his writing project begun before the accident, “while reconsidering it through the prism of head trauma, of this life which has collapsed and which must be reborn”.
This is how Mustapha Zem found a path to healing in the writing of his first book. From now on, he has swapped his financial director costume for pen and paper, determined to embark on new writing projects.
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