Published in Tunis in 1938, Ninette of Sin Street is one of the first works of Tunisian fiction in French. Ninette‘s author, Vitalis Danon, arrived in Tunisia under the aegis of the Franco-Jewish organization the Alliance Israélite Universelle and quickly adopted—and was adopted by—the local community.
Ninette is an unlikely protagonist: Compelled by poverty to work as a prostitute, she dreams of a better life and an education for her son. Plucky and street-wise, she enrolls her son in the local school and the story unfolds as she narrates her life to the school’s headmaster. Ninette’s account is both a classic rags-to-riches tale and a subtle, incisive critique of French colonialism. That Ninette’s story should still prove surprising today suggests how much we stand to learn from history, and from the secrets of Sin Street.
This volume offers the first English translation of Danon’s best-known work. A selection of his letters and an editors’ introduction and notes provide context for this cornerstone of Judeo-Tunisian letters.
“Any responsible teacher (or serious reader!) of modern Jewish literature already understands the urgency with which we need to find more diverse, compelling narratives that explore Jewish experiences throughout the Sephardi and Mizrahi diasporas. Vitalis Danon’s Ninette seems, in this respect, almost too good to be true: a pioneering, charming Franco-Tunisian novella that manages, like the best monologues of Sholem Aleichem, to present us with the voice of one indefatigable, unforgettable Jewish woman, and through her, the complexities of Jewish life in a North African city.”
—Josh Lambert, academic director, Yiddish Book Center, and author, Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture
REVIEWS AND RELATED MATERIALS
- “Hard luck and a dose of pluck”: Interview with co-editors Lia Brozgal and Sarah Stein (UCLA)
- “#MeToo, Tunisia, 1937”: editorial by co-editors in Jewish Journal
- Reviewed in H-France, Sephardic Horizons