“Every woman should fight for the right to be selfish sometimes… for the right of having privacy, having a place for ourselves where we are not wives, not mothers, not workers but just ourselves.” — Leïla Slimani

The internationally bestselling author of In the Country of Others and Watch Us Dance, the first two parts of a trilogy rooted in her family’s history in revolutionary Morocco now returns with I’ll Take the Fire, the daring final novel in the Country of Others trilogy — a haunting story of self-discovery, truth and power, sex and lies. The novel follows two sisters, Mia and Inés: young women enveloped in love yet constrained by the social conventions of Casablanca at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and silenced by the political “truths” that shape their lives.

As they struggle to forge a sense of home — a place of safety and love that nurtures rather than confines — their journey becomes a profound reckoning. Framed by the lives of their mothers and grandmothers before them, theirs is a battle for autonomy, identity and desire, pursued with every sinew of their being.

A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, Slimani is also French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture, and served as jury chair for the 2023 International Booker Prize. She was ranked No. 2 on Vanity Fair France’s annual list of the Fifty Most Influential French People in the World, and in 2024 co-wrote the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games with Thomas Jolly.

In conversation with Madeleine Keane. 

Presented in partnership with the French Embassy in Ireland