Savages: The Wedding

Louatah’s exhilarating four-volume epic holds up a mirror to modern France. Funny, clever and brutal … he is a name to watch … addictive … We can hope that Savages isn’t the last word he’s got to say on France. * the Guardian *[It] gives us race, politics, culture and crime within a vast cast of interlinked characters living the kind of French-Arab lives we rarely read about. Immersive. * Sunday Times Crime Club *It’s an absorbing set-up, not least because Louatah brilliantly conveys the anarchy and chaos of a wedding party in which both sets of families consider the other beneath them * Irish Times *Non-Francophone readers will have to endure the agony associated with waiting for the next season to arrive. * The Glasgow Herald *This is not the first time that the scenario of a French Arab president has been in a French-language novel - this was also the conceit of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission … Savages is, however, a far superior book, having more in common with the complex and crafted plotting of The Sopranos or The Wire than the arch, sarcasm of Houellebecq’s dystopia. [Louatah] promises no happy ending to the tensions that still plague France , but the book manages to thrill and entertain, while never losing the sharp political edge that also makes it important. * The Observer *Exhilarating, sharp-edged, and complex, this is a compelling hybrid of family saga and socio-political thriller. * the Guardian *Ferrante. Knausgaard. Louatah. Three literary series that are better than anything. * Grazia France *An exceptional political and social thiller. The energy and imagination behind The Savages are breathtaking. Like Zadie Smith, Sabri Louatah’s ear is exceptional… * Liberation *A compelling and expansive socio-political thriller. The Savages is a refreshing, if bleak, corrective to the romanticized images of France. In its readability The Savages evokes the nineteenth-century feuilleton, but its pace is best described as “televisual,” reflecting a tightly coiled American television series such as The Wire. Fans of the French Canal+/BBC collaboration Spiral will appreciate its blend of urban grit, cliffhangers and scrutiny of the French justice system. * The Times Literary Supplement *Immense, and immensely popular. * Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker *

SABRI LOUATAH was born in France and now lives in Philadelphia. In 2005, while riots were breaking out across France, he read Demons by Dostoyevsky, and was inspired to write this series. Savages: The Wedding is his first novel.

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