A Waltz by Lynda Chouiten

Charlottesville. University of Virginia Press. 2025. 148 pages.

In A Waltz, Lynda Chouiten crafts an elegant and incisive narrative that follows Chahira, a seamstress from the fictional town of El Moudja in Algeria, on a transformative journey to an international design competition in Vienna. As she strives to assert her artistic identity within a society where rigid conventions dictate women’s roles, Chahira’s journey reflects the complex negotiations many Algerian women undertake, balancing personal ambition with societal expectations.

Chouiten’s prose is both lyrical and sharp, mirroring the duality of her protagonist’s world. At times, the novel reads like a delicate piece of embroidery, each thread meticulously woven into the narrative fabric. Other times, it takes on the abrupt rhythm of a waltz itself—elegant yet punctuated by moments of disruption. The contrast between these two styles underscores Chahira’s inner turmoil: “And yet she would waltz! What kinds of partners were there for this forty-something’s massive, rigid, and slightly awkward body?”

One of the novel’s triumphs is its rich intertextuality. Echoing the works of Assia Djebar, Chouiten situates Chahira’s personal story within a broader sociopolitical framework, drawing on Algeria’s fraught colonial and postcolonial history. The novel’s engagement with madness and confinement recalls classic feminist literary figures, positioning Chahira among the lineage of heroines whose artistic passions are often dismissed as transgressions. “She had a sudden desire to join a meet-up site and create a profile where she would say she was rather pretty—at least her face was—but that she was not good at anything apart from drafting sometimes successful patterns for outfits.”

Chouiten skillfully employs the metaphor of sewing, weaving passages infused with elements of various mythologies to accompany Chahira on her odyssey. This English translation of the 2019 Assia Djebar Prize–winning novel serves as a well-deserved recognition of Chouiten’s highly promising literary journey. With A Waltz, she affirms her status as an important voice in Algerian literature, delivering a novel that is both deeply personal and politically resonant, seamlessly blending poetic prose with trenchant social critique.

Christophe Premat
Stockholm University