"First-person narrative reflects personal problems based on a search for identity by Seriema, a Brazilian-born descendant of Lebanese immigrants. Traveling to Paris, she submits herself to intense psychoanalytic sessions, descriptions of which form the main chapters of the novel. During the sessions, she reflects on her sense of inner and geographic displacement, her search for a home country, her sense of confusion from speaking a language (Portuguese) that is not the idiom of her parents, and the difficulties of disclosing her most intimate troubles in French, the language of her parents' former colonizers. Article by Michèle Sarde is included in this edition, revised by the author following publication of the French version"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.