Leila Slimani | I’ll Take the Fire

Fri 5 Jun 2026 | 6:00pm - 7:00pm

A brown-skinned Moroccan woman with tight curls smiles at the camera. She wears a black t-shirt and gold earrings. A book cover with two women against the backdrop of a purple sky features in the top left corner of the image.
The book cover for I'll Take the Fire by Leila Slimani. The cover image has two women against the backdrop of a purple sky.
A woman with brown skin and shoulder-length dark brown hair is smiling widely. She is wearing red lipstick.

Leïla Slimani, the international bestselling author of Lullaby is visiting Cambridge to reflect on her inspiration, writing process, and introduce her latest work, the Country of Others trilogy.

“Q: If your house was burning down, what would you take with you?
A: I’d take the fire.”

This is the story of two sisters, Mia and Inés. Two girls enveloped in love, trapped by the social conventions of Casablanca at the dawn of the twenty-first century and silenced by the political ‘truths’ that envelop their lives. Mia – the older sister, a warrior and a pariah, her sexuality a matter of scorn, a truth to be erased. Inés – the little sister, a woman trying to carve out an identity in a Paris that derides and erases her with no way back to Morocco, a homeland her father has warned her never to return for her own sake.

Join us for what promises to be a powerful conversation exploring politics and conflict, truth, sex and lies.

Chaired by Aliya Ram, Research Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.

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Book a ticket for this event and the Tayari Jones event – happening on the same evening – and get a 25% discount on your order. Both tickets need to be booked at the same rate e.g. 2 x Full Price tickets or 2 x Concession tickets. 

Venue: University Arms

Duration: 1 hour

Tickets available soon.

Please note: A £2 transaction fee will be added to your basket at the checkout. The £2 fee stays the same regardless of the number of tickets or events you are booking.

Author Biography

Leïla Slimani is the author of Adèle, Sex and Lies and Lullaby, which made Slimani the first Moroccan woman to win France ’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, and a citizen of France, she divides her time between Paris, Portugal and international commitments that take her around the globe.

Chair Biography

Aliya Ram is Junior Research Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, on leave from the University of California, Los Angeles where she works as an Assistant Professor in the English Department. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature, with a joint degree fellowship in the Interdisciplinary Humanities, from Princeton University last year, prior to which she worked for five years as a news reporter at the Financial Times. She has published translations and on translation and also writes fiction and poetry. Her work as a whole is interested in the connections between social pressure and literary experimentation.