Leila Marouane’s fifth novel, The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris, is by many aspects, a radical shift in the author’s work. The novel’s central character is a man: Mohamed Ben Mokhtar – or Basile Tocquard as he oddly re-baptised himself; a middle-manager banker in his forties, full of self-confidence. Ben Mokhtar is a second-generation Algerian immigrant, something you would barely notice since he takes great care to whiten his skin and straighten his hair.