Dust of Promises

‘In a voice as dim as a lighthouse on a rainy night, he said, “Beware of loving a woman who loves bridges.”’Once upon a September in Paris…Still heartsick over the break-up of his relationship with the alluring, elusive novelist Hayat, the narrator of The Dust of Promises finds himself adrift in Paris, where he has come to receive a photography award.His photograph of a traumatised war-orphan has been declared profoundly affecting by the judges, but he knows that no picture can ever fully capture the desolation and destruction he has witnessed in his Algerian homeland.When he stumbles into an art exhibition on one of the capital’s side streets, he is struck by the power of the paintings and feels impelled to learn more about the artist – an Algerian exile whose painful longing for the country he has lost shines out of his work.The artist is none other than Khaled, the man who haunted the pages of Hayat’s first novel, just as the narrator was inextricably entangled in her second. As the two men embark on a tentative friendship, a twist of fate brings Hayat herself to France, where the destinies of all of them will once again collide.The final novel in the international bestselling trilogy from ‘the literary phenomenon’ (Elle) Ahlem Mosteghanemi, The Dust of Promises is a haunting, elegiac story of love, memory and betrayal - and of what it means to come home.'Remarkable, insightful ... The elegiac quality is present not just in the themes, but also in the astonishingly poetic language throughout … I stopped and marvelled every few pages ... This is one of the richest and most evocative books that I have read all year' Independent'Ahlem has carved a place for herself as one of the most important writers of the Arab world' Youssef Chahine, Egyptian director, winner of the Cannes Film Lifetime Achievement Award

A window into a different world, Remarkable, insightful ... The elegiac quality is present not just in the themes, but also in the astonishingly poetic language throughout … I stopped and marvelled every few pages ... This is one of the richest and most evocative books that I have read all year, I only hope we don’t have to wait too long for the two sequels to The Bridges of Constantine to be published in English. The Arab-speaking world shouldn’t get to keep Mosteghanemi’s novels all to itself, Ahlem has carved a place for herself as one of the most important writers of the Arab world, This passionate novel is the third of a trilogy that began with The Bridges of Constantine … The drama happens at an emotional level of hearts yearning and breaking, and exiles longing for home. The writing is beautiful, positively drenched with romance, Ahlem Mosteghanemi is a legend in Algeria: the daughter of an activist exiled during the country’s war of independence, she became the first Algerian woman to publish fiction in the Arabic language. The ensuing misogynistic backlash paradoxically empowered her exilic writings, making her novels bestsellers. Mosteghanemi’s ambitious trilogy is a testament of exile, an allegory of erotic love and an act of political resistance … Description is dreamy and insubstantial, as images effloresce into conceits (“her laughter’s high heels”; she “danced as if weeping”), tantalising the reader with a version of the lover’s tantalisation. An element of postmodern illusionism adds a trompe l’oeil quality, for in this aesthetic world, memory precedes the event remembered; fiction engenders events in the ‘real’ world … A rhapsodic and voluptuous prose poem

Algerian novelist and poet Ahlem Mosteghanemi is the bestselling female author in the Arab world. In December 2016 she was designated UNESCO Artist for Peace. She has more than 10 million followers on Facebook and was ranked in the top ten most influential women in the Arab World by Forbes in 2006. The previous book in her trilogy of bestselling novels, The Bridges of Constantine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2013, and has been translated into several languages and adapted into a television series.Nancy Roberts is a prize-winning translator with experience in the areas of modern Arabic literature, current events, Christian–Muslim relations and Islamic thought, history and law.