In I Will Carry the Fire, Leïla Slimani completes The Land of Others, her family and postcolonial trilogy, with a novel centered on memory, lineage, and freedom. This final installment, published in January 2025 by Gallimard, features Mia, heir to a lineage torn between Morocco and France, between internal exile and political commitment.
A family heritage in the heart of Morocco during the years of lead
The third generation of the Belhaj family, Mia and her sister Inès grew up in the 1980s in a cultured and feminist Moroccan household, but were forced to live in a country frozen by the authoritarianism of the Hassan II regime. The daughter of Mehdi, an upright senior civil servant unjustly imprisoned, and Aïcha, a committed gynecologist, Mia was nurtured by the stories of a complex family history, forged by powerful women – Mathilde, the exiled Alsatian; Selma, the free spinster; Aïcha, the stubborn mother. Through this gallery of characters, Leïla Slimani brings out a lucid and nuanced vision of a changing Morocco, where modernity clashes with religious and social constraints.
The novel, deeply rooted in reality, does not hesitate to confront its characters with exile, confinement, and the symbolic and physical violence of power. Mehdi, a luminous father figure, encourages his daughter to leave to write, love, and live fully, far from the roots that "nail to the ground." An exhortation to freedom that gives the book its title, borrowed from Cocteau: I Will Carry the Fire.
A novel about transmission, exile and the power of books
In the form of an autofiction where fiction and memory intertwine, Leïla Slimani summons a plurality of voices. Mia, now a writer, embodies the link between generations, the custodian of a heritage that she questions, deconstructs, and transforms through literature. Through her, it is the story of the emancipation of a young, homosexual, French-speaking, marginalized woman in a conservative country, which we follow with emotion.
The novelist, winner of the 2016 Prix Goncourt, also questions the notion of identity: being a woman, Moroccan, French, an intellectual, but also being free in a world of compartmentalization. The book is also a vibrant tribute to the powers of reading and writing: “Books saved her from the shame of being alone,” she writes.
With its fluid language, ambitious novelistic structure, and increasing emotional intensity, I Will Carry the Fire proves to be one of the most accomplished installments of the trilogy. It weaves an intimate and political fresco, touching and necessary, which resonates strongly in a world still torn between withdrawal into identity and a desire for openness.
