The Last One Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Q: Has The Last One been made into a film?

Yes. Hafsia Herzi's adaptation, La Petite Dernière, won the Queer Palm and Best Actress for Nadia Melliti at Cannes in 2025.

Verdict: A short, incantatory work of autofiction about a French Algerian lesbian who refuses to give up either her faith or her desire, held back by a repetitive, fragmented style that readers either find hypnotic or wearing.

Best for: Readers of spare, poetic literary fiction who want faith and queerness treated as a real, unresolved tension, and who don’t need a plot or a romance arc.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5: frank about desire, but not a romance and not explicit by reader reports)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5: a 3.82 Goodreads average across about 7,500 ratings, with the style splitting readers)

Tropes: Autofiction, coming of age, faith and sexuality, family secrets, first love, identity, immigrant family, the youngest daughter.

The Last One is Fatima Daas’s 2020 debut, translated from French by Lara Vergnaud and published in English by Other Press in 2021, a literary novel told in short fragments by the youngest daughter of an Algerian family in Clichy-sous-Bois, outside Paris, who prays, loves women, and can’t make the two halves of her life fit.

It sits at 3.82 across about 7,500 Goodreads ratings, Publishers Weekly called it a provocative exercise, and in 2025 its film adaptation won the Queer Palm and the Best Actress prize at Cannes. Readers agree it’s a voice worth hearing. Whether they enjoy hearing it comes down almost entirely to the form.

What Is The Last One About?

This is autofiction: the narrator shares the author’s name, and Daas has said the book parallels her own life. It moves through childhood, school, long commutes on the RER into Paris, asthma, family dinners, mosque, first loves and therapy, never in a straight line. Almost every chapter opens with the same line, “My name is Fatima,” and then circles a new piece of who she is.

Fatima is a practicing Muslim and a lesbian, and she doesn’t want to choose. That’s the book’s heart. Her family’s love feels conditional, her faith feels sincere, and her relationships with women, especially Nina, pull her somewhere her family can’t follow. It’s less a story than a self-portrait assembled from pieces.

What Makes This Queer Muslim Autofiction Work

The voice: Readers describe the repeated refrain as music, a chant or a prayer. One reviewer linked its breathlessness to Fatima’s asthma.
Faith taken seriously: The book doesn’t treat Islam as something to escape. Readers value a narrator who wants both her faith and her desire.
Specific place: Clichy-sous-Bois and the commute into Paris give it a texture readers rarely see in translated fiction.
Intimacy: Readers say it feels like reading a diary, and several finished it in one sitting.
Recognition: It won Les Inrocks prize for best first novel in France and was a PEN Translation Prize finalist in English.

Book Synopsis

Fatima is the youngest daughter, the one who came last and wasn’t planned. She grew up in Clichy-sous-Bois, a working-class suburb of Paris, in an Algerian family where her father’s temper and her mother’s silences shape the house. She has asthma. She is good at school. She learns verses of the Quran and prays with real devotion.

She also knows, early on, that she likes girls. As she grows up, that knowledge becomes harder to keep apart from the rest of her life. She commutes into Paris for university, writes, sees a therapist, and falls in love, most of all with Nina, a relationship that is passionate and difficult in equal measure.

Through it all, Fatima keeps trying to name herself: daughter, believer, lover, writer, outsider. Each chapter begins with her name and adds another piece. The question the book keeps asking is whether all of those selves can belong to one person, and whether her family and her faith will ever have room for the whole of her.

My Review

The best thing about The Last One is its refusal to simplify. A lot of queer coming-of-age stories frame religion as the thing you leave behind. Fatima doesn’t want to leave it. She wants to pray and to love women, and the book holds that tension without pretending it resolves. Readers who share any part of that experience say it lands hard.

The second strength is the form, at least for the readers it works on. The repeated “My name is Fatima” turns the book into something like a litany, and the short, one-sentence paragraphs read close to poetry. Several readers say it’s unlike anything they’d read before.

And the form is also the main complaint. Readers who gave it two or three stars say the repetition gets tiresome, the chapters are too short to go deep, and the fragments never add up to a story. One reviewer felt the narrator talks about her big struggles without explaining why they matter. Another wrote that the structure means its big themes are only touched on lightly. Publishers Weekly made a related point, that the terse style sometimes leaves little room for reflection.

The expectation to reset is genre. It’s listed with sapphic books, and Fatima’s relationships with women are central, but this isn’t a love story. If you want a romance, you won’t find one here. If you want a sharp, unusual portrait of a queer Muslim woman, you will.

My honest note: A singular voice in a form that will either carry you or wear you down. If you like poetic, fragmented literary fiction, read it, and if you need plot and a story arc, sample a few chapters first.

Element	In The Last One
Central relationship	Fatima and her faith and family, with her relationship with Nina as the main love story
Core tropes	Autofiction, coming of age, faith and sexuality, family secrets, first love
Setting	Clichy-sous-Bois and Paris, France
Heat level	2/5: frank about desire, not explicit
Series	Standalone, with an open, unresolved ending
Content notes	Religious trauma, internalized homophobia, family conflict and rejection, an unhealthy relationship, Islamophobia, religious-based therapy

How Spicy Is The Last One?

Not very. Romance.io doesn’t list it, which fits a literary novel. Fatima is frank about desire and about her relationships with women, and Publishers Weekly called the book frank and fervent, but no reviewer describes explicit scenes. The 2/5 reflects honesty about sex rather than heat on the page.

What deserves a warning is the emotional material. Readers flag religious guilt, internalized homophobia, conditional family love, a relationship that hurts as much as it helps, and therapy shaped by religious institutions. For other low-heat queer stories set inside religious families, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion and If You Could Be Mine are both 1/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you like poetic, fragmented literary fiction, you want faith and queerness held together rather than set against each other, you’re interested in French and Algerian diaspora stories, and you like short books you can read in one sitting.

You may want to skip it if: repetition grates on you, you need a clear plot, you want a romance, or you want a book that resolves its central conflict.

In short: a hypnotic self-portrait that you’ll either find powerful or repetitive.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This book has had two lives. In France, La Petite Dernière was a much-discussed debut in 2020 and won Les Inrocks prize for best first novel. In English, Other Press published Lara Vergnaud’s translation on November 23, 2021, and it became a PEN Translation Prize finalist. Then in 2025, Hafsia Herzi’s film adaptation premiered in competition at Cannes, where it won the Queer Palm and Nadia Melliti won Best Actress. That has brought new readers to the book. We found no English-language audiobook and no BookTok or Reddit conversation. On Amazon the US edition holds 4.3 stars across 76 ratings.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The voice comes first. Readers call it intimate, rhythmic and unlike anything they’ve read, and many read it in one go. Then the subject: a practicing Muslim lesbian who won’t give up her faith. Third is the setting, the banlieue and the commute into Paris. A lot of the reviews are in French and German, which says something about how widely it traveled.

What readers argue about and complain about: The form, above everything. Repetitive, fragmented and too short to go deep are the recurring complaints, often from readers who admired what Daas was doing. Second: a lack of reflection. A few readers felt the narrator names her struggles without exploring them. Third: depth. One German reviewer wrote that the big themes are only treated superficially because of the structure. The real split is the refrain itself. For some readers it’s prayer-like and moving. For others it’s the reason they couldn’t finish.

The standalone question worth asking first: It’s a standalone and Daas’s debut, and the ending stays open on purpose. If you liked it, the 2025 film, released in English as The Little Sister, is the natural next step.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is The Last One a true story?

It’s autofiction. The narrator shares the author’s name, and Daas has said the novel parallels her own life. Fatima Daas is also a pen name.

Is The Last One a romance?

No. Fatima’s relationships with women matter, especially with Nina, but the book is a literary self-portrait about faith, family and identity.

Has The Last One been made into a film?

Yes. Hafsia Herzi’s adaptation, La Petite Dernière, won the Queer Palm and Best Actress for Nadia Melliti at Cannes in 2025.

Who translated The Last One?

Lara Vergnaud translated it from French. The English edition came out from Other Press in 2021 and was a PEN Translation Prize finalist.

Is there an audiobook of The Last One?

We couldn’t find an English audiobook. Amazon lists Kindle and paperback editions.

If You Loved The Last One, Read These Next

For another lyrical queer Muslim coming of age, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is set in 1980s Queens. For queer love under religious pressure in Iran, try If You Could Be Mine. And for a Muslim heroine choosing between family and the woman she loves, Only Ever One Choice is a romance with the same tension. Find more on the Muslim sapphic books page and in our Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

The Last One wants to give a practicing Muslim lesbian the right to all of herself at once. The voice, the honesty about faith and the French setting work. The repetition, the thin fragments and the lack of a story arc don’t work for everyone. If you love poetic literary fiction, it’s worth the short time it takes to read. Check The Last One on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, The Last One ranks as a celebrated, experimental work of queer Muslim autofiction. It’s distinctive and honest, held back by a form that divides readers. Read it for the voice rather than for story or romance.