And, that these very same figures emigrated from its former colonies is of course no coincidence. In his most recent novel, he narrates the solitude and wandering of the marginalised, the forgotten and the discarded in post-colonial France – ironically lauded for its protection of human rights. Taia′s disenchantment with Europe is actually refreshing. Un pays pour mourir: "Taia explains that his characters find they′re rejected both in the putative centre of human rights and in the homelands they have fled," writes al-Mousawi In ″Un Pays pour Mourir″, Paris features as a cold, racist limbo for his broken and exiled figures. Thus, because they can′t go back home and because they function as just so much detritus in their new societies, they are stranded somewhere in between. Taia explains that his characters find they′re rejected both in the putative centre of human rights and in the homelands they have fled.
″Un pays pour mourir″ – a country to die in – is a Moroccan phrase signalling frustration with the country, describing it not as a place to live so much, as a place where one is simply waiting to die. Taia explains that he identified with this woman immediately because she was not only probably an outsider in Morocco (as he was), but had also become an outsider in Paris – the place he had always imagined as the epicentre of human rights from his childhood home in Sale, Morocco, prio to moving there in 2000 to pursue a graduate degree in 18th-century French literature. When discussing his latest novel, ″Un Pays pour Mourir″, about a Moroccan prostitute, a gay Iranian forced into exile after Ahmadinejad′s 2009 re-election and a transsexual Algerian who all meet in Paris, author Abdellah Taia recounts his own first day in the city: ″I saw this prostitute – she was an older Moroccan woman – and I thought to myself, this could be me.″
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