A NOVEL THAT brings together a Muslim transported from his native Algeria, a young French woman unjustly deported as a Communard, and the last infant survivor of the Aborigines of Tasrn~ania is clearly the product of a wide-ranging literary imagination. But Anouar Benmalek – a maths lecturer and writer of AlgerianMoroccan birth, based in France, who lays claim to Swiss and Bavarian ancestry – is perhaps better placed than many to understand how the hazards of fortune can link disparate elements.

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