Le Scarabée et l’océan

Nour, 11, is entering 6th grade and has just arrived from Ustrilie, a faraway land where masculine and feminine no longer exist. Nour is Tala's child.

Tala works for Unesco and has just been transferred to France. As she enters the school, Nour discovers that humans are divided into two teams, "girls" and "boys". Nour finds it hard to adapt, and triggers laughter from the others without understanding why. Fortunately, Nour is able to talk to his imaginary friend, a beetle, and meets Eli, whom everyone insists on calling Eliott: the two children form a deep friendship in which they can confide their secrets.

Written while immersed in two middle schools in Saint-Denis, this text by Leïla Anis offers a satire of our categorizations of sex and gender. Reactivating the literary principle of the foreign gaze, which enables us to criticize our habits and existing norms, this mischievous fable is based on linguistic research aimed at deconstructing the rule that masculine prevails over feminine!