Tired of streaming platforms and Ramadan series? A good book will make time fly while you wait for ftour. If you haven’t picked up a 2025 release yet, our editorial team has selected five books 2025 that will keep you hooked until Eid!
What better way to escape than diving into a great books 2025 ? Lucky for you, slow living is in, and Ramadan is the perfect time to get lost in a book. Shoelifer has put together a selection of its favorite new releases—all published in 2025, except for Abdellah Taïa’s novel, which came out in August 2024. What do they all have in common? They each explore Moroccan society and its contradictions.
J’emporterai le feu, by Leïla Slimani
Among the 2025 book releases, the latest installment of Leïla Slimani’s post-colonial Moroccan saga is an obvious choice. J’emporterai le feu follows the third-generation members of the Belhaj family, Mia and Inès, born in the 1980s. Like their grandmother Mathilde and their mother Aïcha before them, these two sisters crave freedom. In France, where they go to study, they experience the loneliness of exile, societal prejudice, and sometimes even racism. They must learn new cultural norms to carve out a place for themselves.
Like the previous volumes in The Country of Others trilogy, this new novel explores the relationship between the individual and the collective, women’s rights, social pressures, and sexual freedom. A Goncourt Prize winner for Chanson douce in 2016, Leïla Slimani once again draws on her family history, examining female figures and personal identity.
Available at Livre Moi.
Price: 300 DH
La Hchouma, by Dounia Hadmi
Journalist and author Dounia Hadmi’s debut novel, La Hchouma, takes aim at the hypocrisy and pretenses of our society. Inspired by her own experiences, this 2025 release tells the story of Sylia, a young student from Rabat’s bourgeoisie who moves to France to study journalism. In Morocco, burdened by social and family expectations, she feels misunderstood. From a young age, the word hchouma (shame) has shaped her life: it’s shameful to show her legs, shameful to dress a certain way, shameful to laugh too loudly,etc.A deep-rooted sense of shame ends up defining her relationship with her body and those around her.
In Paris, where she expected more freedom, she faces the trap of cultural stereotypes. When she joins Libération, she is fully integrated into the newsroom—without ever seeking this “validation.” Sylia doesn’t fit into any predefined category. She is not the child of working-class immigrants; she comes from an affluent background, eats pork, drinks alcohol, and wears short skirts. More broadly, Dounia Hadmi paints a nuanced portrait of Moroccans with dual identities and the diverse realities of North Africans.
Available at Livre Moi.
Price: 250 DH
Je me regarderai dans les yeux, by Rim Battal
Je me regarderai dans les yeux is the first novel by poet Rim Battal, recently published by Bayard. This deeply personal and autobiographical narrative is inspired by events from her teenage years. At 17, while casually smoking a cigarette by her bedroom window, Rim provokes her mother’s fury. Fearing further punishment, she runs away. When she returns home, her mother forces her to undergo a virginity test. Lying on a gynecologist’s table, legs apart, she is subjected to a painful (and above all, humiliating) examination to prove that she has never had sexual relations.
This “small transgression,” which hardly warranted such an extreme reaction, fuels a deep sense of injustice in the young narrator. From this traumatic experience, the rebellious teenager draws a new strength—one that will shape her relationship with society and, more importantly, her identity as an emerging artist.
Available at Livre Moi.
Price: 210 DH
Ils se sont tant aimés, by Tahar Ben Jelloun
In Ils se sont tant aimés, Tahar Ben Jelloun explores the ups and downs of long-term relationships. This is the second volume of The Lovers of Casablanca, picking up 15 years later with Lamia and Nabil. Nabil is a doctor, Lamia a pharmacist, and together they form a seemingly solid couple raising three children. But their stability is shaken when Lamia falls for Daniel, a notorious womanizer. She then asks for a divorce.
After years of love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce, they eventually reunite. Together, they must learn how to reinvent their relationship to make it last. This ongoing effort is at the heart of Ben Jelloun’s novel, set in a society caught between modernity and tradition. Through the ebbs and flows of desire and the daily work required to sustain it, the author examines both the strengths and vulnerabilities of a couple facing the passage of time.
Available at Livre Moi.
Price: 270 DH
Le Bastion des larmes, by Abdellah Taïa
Abdellah Taïa’s latest novel (his eleventh) revisits his signature themes: Morocco, family relationships, and homosexuality. Following his mother’s death, Youssef (the author’s fictional alter ego) returns to Salé, the city where he grew up, endured suffering, and lived with his six sisters and two brothers. After a quarter-century in exile, the ghosts of his past resurface: his childhood friend and lover, whose fate ended in tragedy; his deceased mother; and the abuse and sexual violence he endured as a child. Back in the impoverished neighborhood of his youth—where he experienced both hardship and pain—he attempts to exorcise his demons while questioning his identity and place in Moroccan society.
This powerful and deeply intimate novel swings between brutality and poetry, blending nostalgia with rage.
Available at Livre Moi.
Price: 270 DH
