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The Curious Case of Dassoukine s Trousers
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Promotional Information

• Introduction request out to Laila Lalami, the Moroccan-American author who has publicly supported the author's work for years
• Galleys available upon request
• Book launch and author appearance at PEN World Voices in NYC and/or Book Expo America in May 2016
• Author tour across the US, targeting bookstore and university audiences
• Promotion through the French Embassy's Cultural Services division
• Promotion on LibraryThing, Goodreads, Riffle, and other social reading websites
• Promotion on the publisher's website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum)
• Promotion in the publisher’s e-newsletter
• Promotion at the Texas Book Festival, Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, the American Literary Translators Association Conference, and Book Expo America
• Pitching for author appearances at book festivals around the US, such as Brooklyn Book Festival, Texas Book Festival (Austin), Litquake (San Francisco), Miami Book Fair International, PEN World Voices (NYC), Book Expo America (Chicago)
• Print publicity targeting literary journals and newspaper book sections, especially the Dallas Morning News
• Promotion on LibraryThing, Goodreads, Riffle, and other social reading websites
• Serial rights targeting Granta, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, The White Review; One Story, The Paris Review, Guernica, Tin House, McSweeney’s, the New Yorker, and others
• Publicity targeting The New Inquiry, The Millions, Full-Stop, The Nervous Breakdown, HTMLGIANT, Three Percent, The Literary Saloon, The Quarterly Conversation, and more
• Print and digital advertising in select literary journals and magazines and on their websites, such as Granta, The Rumpus, The White Review, A Public Space, Little Star, The Coffin Factory, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Electric Literature, Music & Literature, Entropy, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today and others

About the Author

Fouad Laroui was born in 1958 in Oujda, Morocco. After his studies in the Lycee Lyautey (Casablanca), he joined the prestigious Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees (Paris, France), where he studied engineering. After having worked in the Office Cherifien des Phosphates company in Khouribga (Morocco), he moved to the United Kingdom where he spent several years in Cambridge and York. Later he obtained a PhD in economics and moved to Amsterdam where he is currently teaching econometrics and environmental science. In addition, he is devoted to writing. He is a literary chronicler for the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique and Economia Magazine, and the French-Moroccan radio Medi1. He has published over twenty novels and collections of short stories, poetry, and essays who lives between Amsterdam, Paris, and Casablanca. His novels have been shortlisted numerous times for the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, and his latest novel was awarded the Grand Prix Jean Giorno. The Curious Case of Doussakine's Trousers won Laroui his first Prix Goncourt for short stories. Emma Ramadan is a graduate of Brown University, received her Master's in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris, and recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship for literary translation in Morocco. Her translation of Anne Garreta's Sphinx was published by Deep Vellum in spring 2015, and her translation of Anne Parian's Monospace is forthcoming from La Presse in fall 2015.

Reviews

"Few writers can match the ingenuity and frenetic energy that Laroui, a leading Moroccan economist, summons in this collection, winner of France's Prix Goncourt for short fiction... However absurd the content of these stories, the bitter legacy of colonialism is impossible to avoid. Laroui is at his most riveting when he seeks to complicate immigrant narrative tropes through formal innovation. " -- Publishers Weekly "Laroui uses a wry, dry, knowing style to address identity and otherness, showing how focus on such issues defines the immigrant experience... Terrific stuff, insightful and often blackly funny." -- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (Starred Review) "Laroui casts his eye on this dour political legacy with the scalpel-like precision of a social satirist...The argumentative friends who meet at the Cafe de l'Univers give the cafe a zany energy. Imagine the Algonquin Roundtable populated only by the Marx Brothers."--Karl Wolff, New York Journal of Books "Laroui writes in dialogue, both interior and exterior, which gives the collection the feel of oral storytelling... We become eavesdroppers, lingering at the edges of the audience in order to hear what is being said. Most of these stories play to the ridiculous. Some are even slapstick in their humor... But beneath the hijinks Laroui manages to place a kernel of pathos--in this instance a reminder of the politics of globalization and its inherent imbalance of power." -- Tara Cheesman-Olmsted, The Rumpus "Fouad Laroui is one of Morocco's brightest talents, and this hilarious and profound collection of short stories is one of the best ways to discover his strange, insightful wit." -- Staff Pick at Albertine Books by Adam Hocker "A hilarious short story collection by Moroccan writer Fouad Laroui... Much of the book is conversations, a wry absurdist take on bureaucracy, life in Morocco, life in Belgium, storytelling itself." -- Jace Clayton (DJ Rupture), Dwarf + Giant "Since his debut in 1996, Fouad Laroui -- endorsing the motto of Beaumarchais , 'I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.' -- has chosen the weapon of humor. A weapon that he uses brilliantly to hide his wounds rather than to 'serve his anger' against stupidity, contempt, malice, intolerance, and fanaticism of all kinds." -- Le Monde "A striking metaphor for our times."--Le Figaro (France) "[A] collection that is as funny as it is poignant and memorable... All of Laroui's gifts are on full display: the interweaving of narrative and commentary; the sharp humor; the gracious, full heart." -- Laura Farmer, The Cedar Rapids Gazette "A writer who is aware of all the oddities of how the world around him works and holds these oddities up to the light, with a biting but gentle intelligence, a warm sense of humor, and a smart linguistic inventiveness." -- Shigekuni Blog "Fouad Laroui has a gift for simultaneously expanding his readers' minds, spinning a yarn, and making us roll our eyes and laugh. Fellow Moroccan writer Laila Lalami has been calling for translations of his work into English for at least a decade." -- M. Lynx Qualey, Bookwitty "The foreign angle is what made me pick up this short story collection but I was happy to find that there is much, much more in Laroui's writing. First of all, it's funny. Laugh out loud on the bus funny. My favorite stories have a narrator spinning tales at a cafe, with a peanut gallery at the ready to put in their own two cents." -- Kazen, Always Doing "This is a unique collection of stories that I can recommend to anyone who wants to experience a wide range of literary styles in a single collection of stories." -- Melissa Beck, The Bookbinder's Daughter "Stories... notable for their wisdom and compassion." -- Willard Manus, Lively-Arts: An Internet Cultural Magazine

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