Nabila Ramdani on Fixing the French Republic

Nabila Ramdani is an award-winning French-Algerian journalist who has written extensively for publications including The Guardian and The Washington Post, while broadcasting for the likes of Sky News, Al Jazeera and CNN.

Nabila joins us in Edinburgh to give a talk on her debut publication, Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic. Described in the Sunday Times as a 'blazing indictment of modern France', Nabila's visit to the bookshop is not to be missed by anyone interested in the future of our European neighbours.

Fixing France

France - the romanticised, revolutionary land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity for all - is failing. Reform is urgently needed. This book is a powerful indictment of the status quo, and a highly original perspective on the challenges to which the nation must rise. Nabila Ramdani is not from the establishment elite: she is a marginalised insider, born and raised in a neglected Paris suburb.

With unflinching clarity, she probes the fault lines of her struggling country, exposing the Fifth Republic as an archaic system which emerged from Algeria's cataclysmic War of Independence. Today, a monarchical President Macron shows little interest in democracy, while a far-right party founded by Nazi collaborators threatens to replace him.

Segregation, institutionalised rioting, economic injustice, the debasement of women, a monolithic education system, deep-seated racial and religious discrimination, paramilitary policing, terrorism and extremism, and a duplicitous foreign policy all fuel the growing crisis. Yet Ramdani offers real hope: the broken French Republic can, and must, be fixed.

About Nabila Ramdani

Nabila Ramdani is a French-Algerian writer from Paris who works as an academic, journalist and broadcaster, mainly covering France and the Arab and Muslim World. She began her award-winning journalistic career in the BBC Bureau in Paris, and has since written extensively for publications ranging from The Guardian to The Daily Mail and The Washington Post, while broadcasting for outlets including Sky News, Al Jazeera and CNN. Educated at Paris VII University, Nabila holds an MPhil in British and American History and Literature, and an Agregation-France's highest teaching qualification-in English. She also has an MPhil in International History, specialising in the Middle East and North Africa, from the London School of Economics. Nabila first lectured at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the US, and then taught at Jesus College, University of Oxford, in the UK.