April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Mabrouck Rachedi grew up in the Paris suburbs, one of 11 children of an Algerian-born manual worker. In August, Paris's Jean-Claude Lattes publishing house brought out the 30-year-old's first novel.

Rachedi had shown an early version of the book, ``Le Poids d'une Ame'' (``The Weight of a Soul'') in October 2005 to editor Karina Hocine, who wasn't bowled over. ``The text was promising, but I didn't know if he could turn it into a novel,'' says the petite publisher in her book-clogged Left Bank office.

Weeks later, when riots erupted in French suburbs, Hocine took him on. ``Things got very violent, and the climate in France completely changed,'' she says. ``I said to myself: He is describing those very riots in his book.''

The tumult of October and November 2005 -- three weeks of car burnings, street clashes and arrests sparked by the accidental deaths of two youths -- have piqued interest in ``les banlieues,'' or metropolitan suburbs, and helped some young French-Arab authors to get their works in print.

Publishers Gallimard, Lattes, Hachette Litteratures, Stock and Seuil all release works by authors raised in blue-collar suburbs, who write in a mix of French and French-Arabic slang. Previously, North African names in print were mostly those of bourgeois writers from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, such as the Goncourt-award winner Tahar Ben Jelloun or Academie Francaise member Assia Djebbar.

Teenage Diary

Publishing houses have noticed the success of 21-year-old Faiza Guene, whose 2004 diary of a suburban teenager ``Kiffe Kiffe Demain'' (``Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow'') sold about 300,000 copies in French -- not counting in two dozen other languages -- and had her touring the U.S. Her second novel ``Du Reve Pour les Oufs'' (``Dreams for the Crazy'') has sold 50,000 copies.

``Kiffe Kiffe Demain'' is a funny and philosophical diary narrated by teenager Doria, who lives with her cleaning-lady mother, has a crush on a petty criminal, and watches soap operas on TV.

The daughter of an Algerian builder, Guene was spotted at age 17 at a neighborhood script-writing workshop by the teacher in charge, whose sister heads publishing at Hachette Litteratures. Guene won a 1,500-euro ($2,005) advance for her first novel, more than triple the 400 euros a month she earned doing odd jobs.

Ambitions

``I never thought of submitting a text to a publisher myself. Where I come from, we just don't have those kinds of ambitions,'' says Guene, who lives in a high-rise building in Pantin outside Paris with her parents, 18-year-old brother and 24-year-old sister, and is looking for her own place elsewhere in the suburbs.

``Publishing is like winning the lottery,'' adds the just- married Guene, as she sips coffee in a cafe on Paris's Canal Saint-Martin with her husband, a hip-hop artist from Ivory Coast.

Her editor, Guillaume Allary, who looks teenaged in his hooded sweater and baggy jeans, says ``the Faiza precedent'' has submissions pouring in from young Arab authors that he mostly rejects. ``Just because they're from `la banlieue' doesn't mean we should publish them,'' he says.

``We're going from zero to 15 books a year on the suburbs,'' Allary, 33, adds. ``Only those writers who tell true stories and have an individual voice will prevail.'' In August, he will release a novel by French-Arab author Mouss Benia.

The newer authors are selling no more than a few thousand copies each. Still, they are luring a broad gamut of readers: Paris university students, grandmothers from remote French villages, Chinese taxi drivers, provincial couples.

Suburban Beauty

Their aim is to counter the French media's portrayal of their kind as high-school dropouts, drug dealers or terrorists. The characters in their books are, instead, victims of life in the suburbs -- arrested by mistake, conned into committing crime.

Rachedi's ``Le Poids d'une Ame'' portrays a youth named Lounes who is expelled from school for bad behavior and mistakenly jailed after a drug deal. The book is a delicate fable, inspired by Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu.

``I wanted to tell a beautiful story based in the suburbs, precisely because there are so many negative things said about them,'' says Rachedi, sporting a ribbed turtleneck and slick eyewear over lunch at a restaurant near the Champs-Elysees.

``I'm not sure the media give a proper picture of `la banlieue,''' says the author, an econometrics graduate who was previously a Societe Generale SA equity analyst. Rachedi has submitted his second novel to Lattes, and written a satirical essay to be published in June by Paris's Les Editions Michalon.

Aftermath

Mohamed Razane, a bricklayer's son from the Paris suburb of Gagny who took up social work after university, delivered the makings of his novel to Gallimard weeks after the riots. Two days later, he says, he was called by a top editor; by June, ``Dit Violent'' (``So-Called Violent'') was in bookstores.

``I think the riots had something to do with it, and that's a good thing,'' says Razane, a 38-year-old father of two whose day job involves working with teenage delinquents. ``We're paving the way for other talents, and there are lots of them in the so-called difficult suburbs.'' Gallimard has asked him for another novel this year; Razane says he isn't ready.

It took 28-year-old Karim Amellal -- son of an Algerian government official who moved as a boy to the Paris suburb of Gonesse -- less than 24 hours to get a contract at Stock. Already a non-fiction author, he had penned ``Cites a Comparaitre'' (``Summoned to Court'') -- the story of a prostitute's son who deals drugs and unwittingly detonates a bomb -- in six weeks, while the riots flared.

Trendy

Seventeen-year-old Elodie Gay-Perret, a high-school student from Marcellaz-Albanais in eastern France, loved it. ``I hate reading in general,'' she says, sneering over an Albert Camus play she read in school. ``But I read this in four days. What I liked was the language: It shows that you can write the way you speak.''

Still, Amellal denies being in vogue. ``We would be trendy if there was a readership emerging, if we had access to the media,'' says the assertive writer in an interview at his small apartment near the Pompidou Center.

Together, Amellal, Guene, Rachedi, Razane and a few others are releasing a book of short stories in September, with Stock publishing. Proceeds will help set up an association that will allow other authors to sprout in underprivileged suburban and rural areas.

To contact the reporter on this story: Farah Nayeri in Paris at farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 13, 2007 01:38 EDT