The latest addition to my website is Ahmed Taibaoui‘s اختفاء السيد لا أحد The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody). Set in Algeria, the novel is divided into two linked parts. In the first apart, we meet the eponymous Mr Nobody. He had almost been executed as a teenager during the Algerian Civil War but had been … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nabile Farès‘La Découverte du nouveau monde (Discovery of the New World). This is a trilogy of books first published French in the 1970s. Farès and his father were very much involved in the Algerian War of Independence but were very disappointed with the outcome, in particular the dictatorship … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kamel Daoud‘s Zabor ou Les psaumes [Zabor or The Psalms]. This novel, by the author of Meursault, contre-enquête (Meursault, Counter Investigation), is a superb novel, better, in my view, than Meursault, about an Algerian man who lives alone with his aunt, only comes out at night and writes … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Boualem Sansal‘s 2084 la fin du monde (2084: The End Of The World). This is Sansal’s updated, Algerianised 1984. Though he refers to 1984, it is a very different book. It is essentially a satire on religious control and orthodoxy in Algeria and Saudi Arabia and similar states. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Boualem Sansal‘s Rue Darwin. This is a superb work by Sansal which tells the story of Yazid, an Algerian, the same age as Sansal, who takes his mother to Paris to die (of cancer) and where she can see her other children, Yazid being the only one still … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Boualem Sansal‘s Harraga (Harraga). Surprisingly enough for an Algerian novel novel this has been published in English and by a fairly mainstream publisher at that. It tells the story of Lamia, an unmarried thirty-five year old Algerian doctor, who lives on her own in the family house. One … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mouloud Mammeri‘s L’Opium et le Bâton [Opium and the Stick]. This novel reflects Mammeri’s own experiences in the FLN. It is an exciting story of a remote village, Tala, and four siblings from that village and how they react to the French occupation. The youngest, Ali, has joined … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mouloud Mammeri‘s La Colline Oubliée [The Forgotten Hill], one of the many Algerian novels sadly not translated into English. This one is about an Algerian village in the period leading up to World War II and during that war. Mokrane is the main character and we follow his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rabah Belamri‘s Le Soleil sous le tamis [The Sun Under the Screen]. This is an autobiographical novel of the author’s childhood in an Algerian village during the 1950s. Belamri is such an accomplished writer that what could have been a pedestrian account works very well. He divides his … Read more
Sadly, two writers whom I have not read but should have done, died yesterday. Assia Djebar was an Algerian writer and wrote novels with a feminist viewpoint. She was also a member of the Académie française. Several of her works have been translated into English. André Brink was a noted South African novelist, best known … Read more