Huguette was born in Algeria, but her family subsequently fled to Morocco to escape persecution by the fascist Vichy regime. She was a teacher in Morocco, Paris and Manchester. Subsequently she was a bilingual secretary at a pharmaceutical company and then PA to a Professor at Manchester University.
She is devoted to French popular songs and gives occasional concerts in Cambridge. Her memoir of the vanished world of Jewish North Africa, Couscous with Tata Hannah, is available as an e-book on Amazon under her maiden name of Huguette Zerbib.
Selected Works
Couscous with Tata Hannah (2019)
Couscous with Tata Hannah is a personal memoir of life in a small Algerian town.
Recently, Huguette’s granddaughter asked her: “Grand’mère, what is our background?” This volume could be seen as an answer to that question.
“Couscous with Tata Hannah” is a memoir of a largely vanished world and of Jewish North Africa. Memory and storytelling are central to Jewish life and the writings incorporate the author’s personal experiences followed by anecdotes about an older generation, orally passed down by her aging mother.
The compilation of episodes and stories form a tapestry rich in colours, sounds and smells, conveying an atmosphere and climate of a time and place where Christians, Jews and Arabs lived and worked side by side under the one universally acknowledged benefactor: the sun, shining equally on rich and poor over their beautiful land.
It has previously only been available as an e-book, but is now published as a paperback, with photographs, by Dubois Publishing and is available at Amazon.
A Promising Pupil (2016)
Awarded First Prize at the Cambridge Writers Short Story Competition 2016.
