Ruben grew up in a poor family in Colombia. Driven out as a teenager by a violent father who considered him too effeminate, he engaged in prostitution in Bogotá, before beginning his transition to Paris, where he was reborn as Francia. Through a day in the life of this generous, endearing and forever wounded heroine, Nancy Huston manages to evoke the violence, the perils, the cold, the hunger and the fear which torment sex workers, mistreated by a failing State. to protect them. By interweaving Francia’s voice with that of 17 men who follow one another in her bed, the Canadian novelist exiled in Paris offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a France broken and homogenized by male desires for domination. “Men are afraid of dying and afraid of living, afraid of failing and afraid of succeeding… that’s what makes them so aggressive. Becoming a man, generally speaking, means learning to transform your fear into violence. » Violence to which the novelist chooses to respond with a vibrant anthem to sorority.
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