ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the 'return' of ex-colonial male migrants back to their 'home' countries is represented as vital in order for women to make their futures. It compares Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Faiza Guene's Kiffe Kiffe Demain. In both Brick Lane and Kiffe, almost all of the male ethnic minorities – nationals, migrants and diasporic citizens – are condemned to an ahistorical narrative that treats them as eternal patriarchs. In Brick Lane, the theme of gendered fate enables the novel to project a vision of individual enterprise to the exclusion of wider socio-economic, political and cultural concerns. In both Brick Lane and Kiffe Kiffe Demain, the representation of men as patriarchal, violent, which leads to divisions between men and women and the living of separate lives. In Kiffe Kiffe Demain, it would appear that sending North African men back to the bled would encourage women to enter the public space in order to integrate.
