The Dust of Promises

‘In a voice as dim as a lighthouse on a rainy night, he said, “Beware of loving a woman who loves bridges.”’
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Once upon a September in Paris…

Still heartsick over the break-up of his relationship with the alluring, elusive novelist Hayat, the narrator of The Dust of Promises finds himself adrift in Paris, where he has come to receive a photography award.

His photograph of a traumatised war-orphan has been declared profoundly affecting by the judges, but he knows that no picture can ever fully capture the desolation and destruction he has witnessed in his Algerian homeland.

When he stumbles into an art exhibition on one of the capital’s side streets, he is struck by the power of the paintings and feels impelled to learn more about the artist – an Algerian exile whose painful longing for the country he has lost shines out of his work.

The artist is none other than Khaled, the man who haunted the pages of Hayat’s first novel, just as the narrator was inextricably entangled in her second. As the two men embark on a tentative friendship, a twist of fate brings Hayat herself to France, where the destinies of all of them will once again collide.

The final novel in the international bestselling trilogy from ‘the literary phenomenon’ (Elle) Ahlem Mosteghanemi, The Dust of Promises is a haunting, elegiac story of love, memory and betrayal - and of what it means to come home.
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''Remarkable, insightful ... The elegiac quality is present not just in the themes, but also in the astonishingly poetic language throughout … I stopped and marvelled every few pages ... This is one of the richest and most evocative books that I have read all year'' Independent

''Ahlem has carved a place for herself as one of the most important writers of the Arab world'' Youssef Chahine, Egyptian director, winner of the Cannes Film Lifetime Achievement Award