- Noureddine Aba (1921 – 1996, Algeria) wrote several French language plays on Nazi Germany (inspired by his presence as a journalist at the Nuremberg trails).
- Driss Chraïbi (1926 – 2007, Morocco) – La Civilisation, ma mère! (1972, English trans. Mother Comes of Age, 1984). Written originally in French, this novel deals with Morocco under colonialization during World War II. The novel is narrated by two brothers who tell the story of their mother, who’s life has been restricted to that of the traditional mother and wife, as they help her to see the colonizer not only as barbaric occupiers but also as cultured intellectuals. This eventually leads to the mother’s education and struggle for the liberation of women from tradition and patriarchy (also in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Feminism: Women in Education).
- Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Faramān (1927 – 1990, Iraq) – al-Nakhla wa al-Jīrān (‘The Palm Tree and the Neighbors’, 1967). This novel depicts life in Baghdad during the World War II, with a focus on those marginalized in Iraqi society (reference). The writer made his characters speak the actual language of the real people who inhabited a part of Baghdad during World War II. Different ethnicities thus are made to communicate in different accents and nuances (such as the Armenian and the southern peasant), as well as their conditions (such as what the drunk says) (reference) (also in L: Languages and Dialects: Dialects: Iraqi dialect).
- Aḥmad al-Faytūrī (1955-, Libya) – Sarīb (‘A long story’, 2001). Written as a childhood memoir based on al-Faytūrī’s own upbringing in Benghazi, Libya. The story describes the intimate bond between the young narrator and his Amazigh grandmother who recounts her memories of World War II. Her memories then slip into fairy tales and folk stories (reference).
- Nouzha Fassi Fihri (?, Morocco) – La Baroudeuse (‘The fighter’, 1997). La Baroudeuse is set in Fez in 1944 and centers Lalla Kenza, who is living an unhappy marriage to Sharif after her forced divorce from the man she loved, her cousin Moulay, because of this latter’s appointed in a government position in Tangiers (reference). Moulay finally returns to Fez after four decades of absence in a period of intensified anti-colonial sentiments. In the demonstrations following the 1944 Moroccan Nationalist party’s (Istiqlal) presentation of the Independence Manifest, Sharif disappears and turns up deceased. Lalla and Moulay keep each other company, discussing their time apart as they distribute food during the siege (reference).
- Muʿataz Futayha (1987-, Egypt) – Akhir Yahūd Iskandariyya (‘The last Jews of Alexandria’, 2008). This novel is set in Alexandria in the 1940s, at the start of World War II, until the end of the last century (reference). It describes a love story between two characters, the Muslim woman from an aristocratic family, Sārah, and Yūssuf, who comes from a Jewish family, before this latter’s forced migration to Israel after the war (also in R: Religion and Sectarianism: Judaism and Arab – Jews relationships).
- Ṭaha Ḥusayn (1889 – 1973, Egypt) – Aḥlām Shahrazād (1951, English trans. The Dreams Shahrazad, 1974). This novel starts on the 1009th night, when Sharazad tells the story of a king’s daughter called Fātina, who refuses to get married. The author uses the stories of Fātina to criticize conditions in Egypt during World War II. Shahrazad turns the confused king Sharayar into an enlightened man who thinks and who realizes that knowledge can only be obtained through effort (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales: One Thousand and One Nights).
- Najīb Maḥūẓ (1911 – 2006, Egypt) – Khān al-Khalīlī (1945, English trans. Khan al-Khalili: A Novel, 2011). This novel covers the period from 1941 to 1943, during World War II. Aḥmad, an employee at the Ministry of Works, and his family moves to Khān Khalīlī street, thinking that the Nazi’s wouldn’t dare to bomb that neighborhood because of its religious significance. The novel describes the lively daily social and political realities of the neighborhood, especially during Ramadan, and its population’s support for the Germans rather than the British (also in C: Cities: Egypt: Cairo).
- ʿĀliyyah Mamdūḥ (1944-, Iraq) – Ḥabāt al-Naftālīn (1986, English trans. Mothballs: A Novel of Baghdad, 2005). The young child Hudā grows up in poverty in Baghdad of the 1940s and 1950s in an instable household, fearing her father and with an ill mother. She describes her friendships with other children and the details of her house and neighborhood, Al-Adhamiyyah, including its residents. The story is set in Iraq’s early decades of independence of the British Empire, and Hudā follows the anti-colonial politics of Iraq in the news and in her neighborhood, such as the anti-British demonstrations (reference). The novel uses a child-like language and includes Iraqi dialect (also in F: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: War and devastation through children’s eyes).
- Albert Memmi (1920-, Tunisia) – La Statue de Sel (1955, English trans. Pillar of Salt, 1992). Set in French Tunisia between the two World Wars, this novel is the coming-of-age of the Jewish Tunisian Alexandre. As he grows up in a poor Jewish neighbourhood in Tunisia, he becomes increasingly alienated from his religion and environment, while he increasingly identifies with the French colonizer (reference). That is, until he is sent to a labour camp during World War II, when he starts to address the anti-Semitism and Nazi occupation of Tunisia (reference). The novel sheds light on both the effects of colonialism on the suppressed individual, as well as the political and social developments in Tunisia in the time-period between 1920 and 1943 (also in F: Family Life: Children and Adolescents: Bildungsroman and R: Religion and Sectarianism: Judaism and Arab – Jew Relationships).
- Mouloud Mammeri’s (1917 – 1989, Algeria) was a prominent Amazigh author. His novels La Colline oubliée (‘The forgotten hill’, 1952) and Le Sommeil du justes (1955, English trans. The Sleep of the Just, 1958) both look at the experience of the Amazigh during and around World War II. The author himself was conscripted into the French army during the same war (also in M: Minorities: Amazigh).
La Colline oubliée tells the story of the Kabyle, an Amazigh people living in the mountains of Algeria, whose youth are suffocated by traditional native customs. It is set at the eve of World War II, and the village in which the novel is taking place is suffering from drought. In Le Sommeil du Juste the hero of the novel is shocked at the confrontation of Amazigh and French culture while he is abroad during World War II, eventually suffering from a war trauma.
- Ḥanna Mīnāh (1924 – 2018, Syria) – al-Maṣābīḥ al-Zurq (‘The blue lamps’, 1954) and al-Shirāʿ wa al-ʿĀṣifa (‘Sail and Storm’, 1966).
al-Maṣābīḥ al-Zurq describes the struggle against French colonial rule during World War II, led by Muḥammad Ḥalabī, a local butcher, in Latakia while using the backdrop of class conflict (reference). Its hero, Fāris, is a sixteen-year-old boy living in Latakia who is confronted with the incursion of French forces in Syria during World War II (also in Societal Change: Class and Social Change).
al-Shirāʿ wa al-ʿĀṣifa is also set in Latakia under French colonial rule and describes the political sentiments in Syria during World War II through the story of a sailor suffering shipwreck. When the main protagonist, Muḥammad Ibn Zahdī al-Ṭarūsī, is caught up in a heavy storm at sea, his ship sinks and he forced to stay on mainland before eventually venturing off to sea with a new ship (reference). On the mainland, Muḥammad befriends the communist fighter Kāmil, and he gradually becomes politically active against the French forces (reference). The story of the sailor’s struggle against nature/ the storm, is juxtaposed with the destruction the war brought about in Latakia. The novel was made into a 2012 movie with the same name (also in N: Nature: Waters).
- Hishām al-Khashin (1963-, Egypt) – Ḥadath fī Barlīn (‘It happened in Berlin’, 2018). This novel deals with the topic of the holocaust and emphasises with the victims of the Nazi regime. The novel starts in Berlin on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, when a pogrom against Jews took place and the German officer Shmīdt decides to help his Jewish neighbour and his family escape Germany. The novel continues to describe the life of Rāshīl, the Jewish daughter of the family, and Shmīdt’s daughters Līliyyān and Hīldā in the period between 1938 and 1993, each of them having different reactions to the Nazi regime that determine their life after the war. While Hīldā and her husband are arrested for criticizing the government, Līliyyān is being pursued by the Mossad because she was an assistant to Eichmann and ends up fleeing to Nasser’s Egypt, a refugee not uncommon to Nazi’s (reference).
- Ibrāhīm ʿAbd al-Majīd (1946- , Egypt) – La Aḥad Yanām fī al-Iskandariyya (1996, English trans. No One Sleeps in Alexandria, 1999). This novel, which is part of a trilogy on Alexandria (see C: Cities: Egypt: Alexandria), is set in the wake of the World War II and shows the daily struggles of its inhabitants during the war. It portrays how the war impacted the city through the many Europeans who settled in Alexandria and Egyptians who partook in the war, but also the battles that left a mark on the city’s infrastructure. It does this while also using intertextuality with heroes and martyrs of both the Coptic and Islamic religious traditions (reference).
- Boualem Sansal (1949-, Algeria) – Le village de l’Allemand ou le journal des frères (2007, English trans. The German Mujahid, 2009). Set in Algeria, France, and Germany, this novel focuses on two brothers from an Algerian mother and a German father, who were raised by their uncle in a Parisian banlieu (reference). When the oldest brother, Rachel, commits suicide, he leaves his younger brother his diaries, which lead him to discover that their parents where massacred by Islamists, and that their father was a SS officer who after the World War II found refuge in Algeria. This leaves him in shock, as he tries to come to terms with his own past and that of his family.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
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- Fabio Caiani and Catherine Cobham, 2010. “Bread and Cinema: Baghdad in al-Nakhla wa-ʾl-jīrān by Ghāʾib Tuʿma Farmān.” MEL 13 (3): 231-259
- Charis Olszok. 2016. “Creating memory: animal tales and deep history in Modern Libya fiction.” MEL 19 (3): 260-277
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- Caroline Beschea-Fache. 2012. “Transnational Heritage in Boualem Sansal’s ‘The German Mujahid’” Culture, Theory and Critique 53(2): 163-179, p. 164