Barcelona Metropolis

Najat El Hachmi, who went down in history for winning the Ramon Llull Prize with El patriarca [The Patriarch] in 2008. It was the first time that a Moroccan writer had received a prize coveted for its monetary award. However, behind the flashes of success, the reality is more bitter. This is how El Hachmi captures it, who tells us, once again, what it means to win an award that later is used by journalists to question her about her Muslim roots and exalting her as a – false – model of integration.

Her status as a migrant has occupied much of the literature of Najat El Hachmi, who went down in history for winning the Ramon Llull Prize with El patriarca [The Patriarch] in 2008. It was the first time that a Moroccan writer had received a prize coveted for its monetary award. That the prize was named after “Ramon Llull” – a philosopher who stood out for his desire to build bridges with Arab culture – afforded an additional dimension to this surprising and juicy literary phenomenon, socially speaking. It is clear that those from “here” – as El Hachmi puts it – saw it as a milestone, a test of the image of “host country” that the institutions strive to forge. However, behind the flashes of success, the reality is more bitter. This is how El Hachmi captures it, who tells us, once again, what it means to win an award that later is used by journalists to question her about her Muslim roots and exalting her as a – false – model of integration.

While in El patriarca the Catalan writer introduced us to the oppressive world of women in Islam through the unidirectional figure of the father, in La hija extranjera [The Foreign Daughter] (2015) and in Madre de miel y leche [Mother of Honey and Milk] (2018), the ambivalent and complex figure of the mother takes centre stage. And pulling on this female thread, now comes El lunes nos querrán [On Monday They Will Love Us], a novel with autobiographical hues written in Spanish, winner of the Nadal Award. Likewise, the author herself was responsible for the Catalan version, which, in the edition published by Edicions 62, is not even presented as a translation. The quote at the head of the book reads: “To the brave who went off the right path to be free. Even if it hurt them.” In fact, the novel is a letter to a “you”, the female friend who encourages the main character to leave a claustrophobic neighbourhood that tries, by all means, to restrict her life as a woman.