Lila Says

When Lila an innocent sixteen-year-old Roman Catholic girl living in a project outside of Paris stops to talk to Chimo, a nineteen-year-old boy of North African descent, she puts into motion a sequence of events that is shockingly raw, sensual, and tragic. Lila's angelic looks mask a powerful eroticism that beguiles and confounds Chimo. As she tells him increasingly troubling tales of her exploits and violations, Chimo coolly records her story, while being drawn into the vortex of her sexual storm."Titillating and innocent all at once", is how Times international edition described this tale of wanton sensuality and degradation. Elle in France concurred: "Lila Says is a magnificent account of the loss of innocence in a corrupt era". Literary Review in England called it "a tender, strangely affecting tale of love and eroticism in the bleakest of climates". And Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung declared it "the work of an anonymous genius".