The motto of Samir, genannt Sam is derived from The Diary of Anne Frank: ‘I hope I shall be able to entrust you with anything, in a way I have never been able to with anyone.’ This sentence never left him, as Bouzamour repeatedly explained.

The author found that his readers must also experience this feeling, they should think that he wanted to personally give an account, which is reflected in the tone of the book. In Samir, genannt Sam Bouzamour tells the coming-of-age story of Samir Zafar, a muslim child from ‘De Pijp’ who has to muddle through his life in Amsterdam, with an adequate amount of humour, the tone at times reminding one of rap.  

Multicultural identity is one of the main topics of Bouzamour’s debut novel in Austria. Being muslim isn’t ‘hip’, to say it in Samir’s words, that is made painfully clear. Moreover, Samir is torn between his parents’ world and that of his chic high school, into which he is accepted against all expectations. The announcement of the book by Residenz illustrates the various faces of the adolescent:

In the Netherlands the publication of Bouzamour’s book hit like a bomb. Within a few months the book was reprinted several times and in no time Bouzamour became one of the most renowned Dutch authors. However, this wasn’t the only reason why Bouzamour’s work was translated, as the author was already known in the German-speaking world. In 2015 Bouzamour was a guest at the Anne-Frank-Friedenstage [Anne Frank Peace Days] in Bergen where he stayed as a ‘Stadtschreiber’ [Writer in Residence] in 2015/2016 and talked to the youth about the Holocaust.

Last but not least Mano Bouzamour was one of the stars during the events in the context of the ‘Schwerpunkt Flandern und die Niederlande’ [Focal Point Flanders and the Netherlands] at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2016, during which the topic of literature by people of migrational background took centre stage (#Fairs) and authors such as Mano Bouzamour and Fikry El Azzouzi – a Flemish author with Moroccan background – were at the centre of attention. Bouzamour repeatedly emphasised in interviews that he wasn’t happy with the fact that his novel Samir, genannt Sam was labelled as ‘migrant literature’.

A similar hype as in the Netherlands did not develop around Bouzamour in Austria. In the Netherlands, just after the release of his book, he was given the chance to describe how he broke free of his Moroccan community just as his main character.

Everyone seemed to want to hear about how he suffered from the fact that his ‘literary act of liberation from religion’ (Angela Gutzeit, 2017) wasn’t received well by his community at first (Kaminski, 2014). After the publication of his debut novel Bouzamour had been shown the door by his parents. He had suddenly become persona non grata in his former social circle.

In Austria references were also made to the incidents, but no comparable ruckus arose. Bouzamour was one of the ‘star guests’ (Anon., 2016b) at the Buch Wien in 2016, but everything remained quiet (#Fairs). Even Bouzamour’s ‘partially not completely politically correct’ (Eidlhuber, 2017) exploration of the problems of Moroccan society was merely registered in Austria. One didn’t feel concerned. And anyway, was that really the intention? ‘When I write, I am happy’ said Bouzamour in 2017 in his interview for Der Standard as response to the question why he doesn’t speak out more clearly in his oeuvre about what is currently discussed in Austria e.g. ‘islamic fundamentalism and the daesh’. Maybe that is why it seems as though it were all about a problem of Amsterdam, and therefore worth a trip: