L'Amande, by Nedjma, trans C Jane Hunter

The dance of desire and disguise

The author explained the 11 September link when interviewed by the New York Times. Nedjma - who makes TV appearances heavily disguised for fear, it's claimed, of reprisals - said the "shocking, outrageous" terrorist act and the response of the West, obsessed by "murder and blood", showed that "no one cared about the human body".

And so we have L'Amande, a tale of self-discovery that sits squarely - with legs spread - in the tradition of French erotica. Nedjma may be North African, but her literary soeurs are Catherine Millet, Anaïs Nin and Marguerite Duras, with a hint of The Story of O. My guess is that she's a real Muslim woman - Algerian, perhaps, given her pseudonym - and definitely a sophisticate rather than from background described in the book. The "rural" sections of the novel are almost certainly the product of fiction rather than autobiography.

The story itself is familiar. Innocent Badra flees the countryside to the big city and finds love, enlightenment and heartache at the hands (and mouth, and more) of a wealthy, cultured older lover named Driss. The writing is bold and ornate and probably sounded a whole lot better in French. Sometimes it's hot; sometimes it's not. Nedjma may find herself simultaneously nominated for orthodox literary prizes and the Literary Review's Bad Sex award.

Yes, let's talk about sex: for this book's claim on our attention is that it tackles Muslim sex from the woman's point of view. Half the story unfolds in Badra's village. There is a virginity test described as a rape; a brutal wedding-night; lecherous old men; and sapphic moments in school dormitories and the steam-filled hammam. These scenes convincingly sketch a world of public hypocrisy and private sensuality.

The shift to the city, Tangiers, signals a slide into cliché. Instead of the elegant depravity of Driss's grandmother, whose delight is a knickerless teenage girl sitting on her face, we get a pair of insatiable lesbians straight out of a low-budget porn flick and a married professor who likes men on the side.

Where 11 September is in all this remains mysterious. The novelist's pen-name hints at her ambitions: Nedjma is the eponymous heroine of a 1957 French-language novel by Algerian writer Kateb Yacine. A passionate woman with numerous lovers, Nedjma also symbolises her country's quest for identity during French colonial rule. Like L'Amande, Kateb's work is characterised by baroque language, choppy narratives and a fondness for mythologising.

Kateb's Nedjma was hailed as the first true Maghribi (North African) novel, and is still regarded as revolutionary. The Nedjma of L'Amande writes with passion, precision and a histrionic beauty, but she won't be starting any revolutions - not even sexual ones.