For Victor Hugo, press 1

For Samuel Becket, press 3

Impassioned by the French culture, and by the cinema in particular, Oualid fights off boredom by noting down colorful conversations he overhears in the streets of Nabeul. His one true dream is to work as a performer in Paris.

But things don’t happen as he imagined they would. After disappointing theatre studies in Tunis and a short-lived attempt to emigrate to Montpellier, the young man stumbles upon a job offer he can’t refuse. For a call center, unlike any other, he is too incarnate a great author of his choosing. For Oualid, it’s his chance to become the person he identifies with the most, both through his vision of the world and his sense of the absurd: Samuel Beckett!

This inventive coming-of-age novel leads us with biting humor into the growing pains of a young Tunisian looking for his place in the world.

Aymen Gharbi was born in 1981 in Tunisia. He wrote a thesis on the relationship between series and serialized novels. His two previous novels were also published by Asphalte: Magma Tunis (2018, prix des Grandes Ecoles) and La Ville des impasses (2021).