Only lies are true

Malik Sam

(Eyrolles, 364 pages, 2024)

A soul-stealing witch for some, a frail and fierce victim for others, seventeen-year-old Nour is simply a young woman born into a boy’s body who dreams of one day being free to be herself. With a will of steel forged by despair, she knows who she is and what she wants: to at all costs flee Benin, the country of her birth, obtain refugee status papers, find her way to Libya, and then cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach the European continent. When on her path she encounters men without faith or law, she is ready to join their sides, and be as ruthless as the worst of them.

Sam retraces the migratory journey of Nour with images of stirring realism, and a cast of memorable characters—not least Nour, a complex protagonist who can count on no one but herself and who, to survive, becomes both victim and perpetrator. With incisive writing style, Sam catapults us into the heart-breaking, at times, unbearably violent reality of migrants, especially women. We closely follow Nour as though a fellow traveler in her gripping saga through a refugee camp in Tunisia, a smugglers’ lair, a sordid prison in Libya, an oasis for women in the desert, and a Zodiac boat bobbing up and down on the Mediterranean.

A compelling storyteller, Malik Sam offers an uncompromising and eye-opening novel about the suffering and dehumanization of migrants. Only Lies Are True is a remarkable debut novel— the kind that grabs you and lingers long in your mind.

 Malik Sam is a musician and translator. Only Lies Are True is his first novel.