pThe first novel available to English readers by Fawzia Zouari, one of the most important North African authors writing today, begins with an emergency crew's arrival at a Parisian apartment. Two emaciated young women, sisters, are brought out on stretchers. To the crowd of onlookers the women's condition is mystifying for the two sisters, this is the inescapable end to a tragic series of events.ppInspired by an actual news story from the French headlines, iI Die by This Countryi introduces us to Nac ra and Amira. Casting her mind back in the midst of the opening pages' upheaval, Nac ra pieces together her fragmentary knowledge of her parents' lives in rural French Algeria and their immigration to Paris in the years following Algeria's war for independence. Her memories of how both she and Amira struggled to find their place as children of immigrants reveals the enormous stress of social exclusion and identity conflicts facing immigrant youth. Nac ra and her family yearn for acceptance