A trained journalist, author, successful screenwriter and director for theatre, television and cinema, Judith Elmaleh is releasing her first novel: “Une Reine”, published this fall by Robert Laffont and available in the best bookstores in Morocco.
Passing through Rabat and Casablanca, Judith presented her book there in partnership with the LivreMoi bookstores. “A Queen” reveals a family secret, the true story of the Elmalehs and takes the reader to the heart of the intimate life of a Moroccan Jewish family in Morocco in the 1930s, marked by silence and silence.
The story is built around two generations, two stories, two women in search of themselves, whose crossed destinies Judith Elmaleh skilfully embroiders.
The book begins, in Casablanca, in the last century. Mimi has never worn such a beautiful dress. Since morning, her mother and her sister have been busy around her. At fourteen, this is the first time that she has been invited to such a banquet and thus honored. Mimi doesn’t know, but that night they got her married.
We are then in Paris, nowadays. For the second time, Anna divorces. While the movers are busy, she observes, flabbergasted, her life which has just burst into pieces, and measures what remains to be accomplished: finding a new apartment, raising her two children as if nothing had happened – and get organized with their respective fathers – get that screenwriting job she needs… But does she even have the strength?
On a whim, Anna decides to go catch her breath at Casa, at her grandmother’s, in this apartment where everything is in its place. A world and two generations separate these two women. Faced with her disoriented granddaughter, Mimi will gradually lift the veil on family secrets that until then were well kept…
Author, successful screenwriter and director for theatre, television and cinema, Judith Elmaleh broadens the palette of her writing with this intimate and touching work. The one who has often worked in the shadow of her brother Gad makes a name for herself and enters the light.