Los secretos de Nur
Najat El Hachmi’s first YA novel, an absolutely necessary narrative about the construction of one’s identity between childhood and adolescence.
Nur is a 12-year-old girl who is very intelligent, and is the daughter of immigrant parents. One day, Nur’s teacher calls her parents to share great news: she has received a scholarship to attend the best high school in Barcelona.
On the one hand, Nur is happy because receiving the scholarship is a reward for her hard work, but at the same time, she doesn’t want to go far away or leave Amal, her cousin and best friend, with whom she has gone to school all her life.
When September comes, she will discover a world very different from her own, which will lead her to clearly see the inequalities and rejection created around what is unfamiliar to some: at high school, she will feel different for the first time, but rather than standing idly by, she will confront racism while trying to build her own identity, caught between two cultures and between childhood and adolescence.
