Bouraoui, Nina

The French novelist and songwriter Nina Yasmina Bouraoui was born in Rennes as the child of an Algerian father, an international economist and a French mother, a lawyer, a few years before France left Algeria. The family moved to Algiers when Yasmina was two. When she was fourteen she spent her summer holiday with her maternal grandparents in Bretagne. One day it was abrubtly decided that she must return to Algeria. The family later moved to Switzerland and then to the Emirates. Bouraoui attended French schools throughout and later settled in Paris where she studied law and philosophy. She is among the most important contemporary authors writing in French and she is often mentioned in conjunction with the Nobel Prize.