In Salé, Morocco, a child runs, falls, and gets back up. He dreams of cinema, of writing, of a life that will take him far away from his impoverished neighborhood, from violence, from those who consider him effeminate. Through his memories, from Salé to Marrakesh, from Paris to Cairo, Abdellah Taïa recounts his falls and his rebirths: the rape he avoided, the men he glimpsed, the lovers he loved. Fragments of the past that allow an “I” in the midst of an identity struggle to recount his Arab culture, which, like him, falls and is reborn.