Fixing France
How to Repair a Broken Republic
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.
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 holds an MPhil in British and American History and Literature from Paris VII University, and an MPhil in International History from the London School of Economics, specialising in the Middle East and North Africa. Nabila began her award-winning journalistic career in the BBC's Paris Bureau. She has broadcast for outlets including Sky News, Al Jazeera and CNN, and has written extensively for The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Washington Post and others.
