Identità e dissimulazione. Tre personaggi in cerca d’altrove

Three characters, two countries, one common search: finding the right direction.
Three lives intertwined into a globalized world, where the North and the South face each other showing conflicts and lacerations. This is the context within Rachida Lamrabet, Belgian author of Moroccan origin, sets her first novel Vrouwland.
The story begins in Morocco, abandoned by the young Younes to emigrate to Europe. His wish to meet Miriam is only a pretext to hide the grief and anger for the extreme poverty of his country, an unintentional self-deception to escape from the stagnation he is sinking into.
The plot moves then to the rich Antwerp, where Mariam, a Moroccan second generation migrant, changed her name to Mara in order to delete every trace of her origins, to be free and become something, camouflaging herself behind a mask. It is an unexpected travel to the repudiated Morocco which leads Mara to question the strong and emancipated identity she had apparently built.
Mara is convinced to leave by her brother Marwan. Unemployed and come out of prison, full of grudge and frustration against the Belgian society, he looks at drugs as a way to escape, but this only leads him to split off from reality.
Alternating memories and perspectives, Lamrabet lays bare stereotypes and contradictions of the multicultural society. False certainties and assumptions are revealed through the irrational, in a travel which forces Mara to deconstruct her false identity to face open wounds and unsolved questions.