Synopsis
The first book of poetry from Les Fugitives: an exquisite, deeply thoughtful meditation on exile, language, writing and identity which takes as inspiration the myth of the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis.
She walks alone, leaving no footprints on the sand, and her thought ‘stitches the pieces of the world back together’. She steps from one word to the next and traces signs in the dust of the future. For Jeanne Benameur, who with The Step of Isis delivers her most personal work to date, Isis is a sister who advances with her along the seashore. Like Isis, poetry responds to life’s call where the blue of the sky mingles with the blue of the sea. Isis, or time, is at work in our lives, like the words for which we are ‘the temporary dwelling’, like a waking dream, a calming thought: Isis is unity rediscovered.
About the author
eanne Benameur was born in Algeria to Algerian and Italian parents, who emigrated to La Rochelle in France when she was five. Further to a career in teaching, she worked as an editor, before devoting herself to her own writing in 2001. Her first novels, for young adult readers (Samira des quatre-routes, and Adil, coeur rebelle) were inspired by her experience as a teacher and published in the early 1990s but her first publication was the poetry collection Naissance de l’oubli (Escaping Memory). Benameur became a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays, winning multiple national and international awards, notably the 2002 UNICEF Prize for her debut short novel Les Demeurées (The Idiot Women), the Grand Prix RTL-Lire award, as well as several regional readers’ prizes in France, and the Corsican readers’ award 2021. A screen adaptation of Les Demeurées is in production for the European culture TV channel ARTE. Her writings have been translated into many languages, and several of her works have been adapted for live music performance.
This book can be found in:
More books published by Les Fugitives
Contemporary literary fiction & non-fiction translated from the French. Modern classics and English originals.
More books by Jeanne Benameur
More books written or translated by Bill Johnston
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