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Profile: Monia Mazigh embraces fiction as a political act

Published: 17 January 2017

Amid the political anxieties of our time, Monia Mazigh’s latest novel, Hope Has Two Daughters, presents a historical milieu where some of the worst-case scenarios already exist. In 2010 Tunisia, press freedom is non-existent, with all major newspapers toeing the government line; human rights activists and journalists are often jailed; and Muslims are persecuted for openly practising their faith.

...Mazigh, who has a PhD in finance from McGill University, expected things would be easier once she arrived in Ottawa. But she found the finance industry in which she worked to be an old boys’ club. There were a minimal number of women working beside her, and few of those were wearing a hijab. Again, Mazigh found herself a minority in a culture that pressured her to conform, but she persisted in her manner of dress, a practice she says gives her strength and protects her “inner soul.”

Read full article: Quill and Quire, January 2017

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