- Djamal Amrani (1935 – 2005, Algeria) – Le Témoin (‘The witness’, 1960). This literary work is an autobiographical account of the authors experiences in the Algerian nationalist movement and his arrest and imprisonment in 1957 after taking part in the 1956 student strikes (reference).
- Rabah Belamri (1945 – 1995, Algeria) – Le Soleil sous le tamis (‘The sun under the screen’, 1982) and Le regards blessé (‘Shattered vision’, 1995).
Le Soleil sous le tamis is a semi-autobiography of the author’s childhood in Algeria during the 1950s, when the Algerian War took place (also in C: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: War and devastation through children’s eyes).
Le regards blessé (‘Shattered vision’, 1995). Written in the form of a diary, this novel describes the dire situation of Algeria after the war through the story of its increasingly blind character, Hassan. Blindness is used symbolically, as Hassan cannot literally see the world around him, but is dependent on other senses (reference). Belamri’s novel also makes mention of the harkis, a social group who fought with the French during the Independence war and were rejected and hunted for by Algerian society following the war (reference) (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Physical Disabilities: Blindness).
- Rashīd Būjdirah (written elsewhere as Rachid Boudjedra, 1941-, Algeria) – Al-Tafakuk (‘The unweaving’, 1981). This novel depicts the communists’ contribution to the liberation war in Algeria. In the novel, two seemingly opposed characters are bound by a photograph: that of the elderly former soldier al-Ṭāhir, and the young female urban employee Salmā. Salmā’s patience and curiosity lead al-Ṭāhir to tell her his battle stories of the Algerian war. Al-Tafakuk is the first novel that Būjdirah wrote in Arabic. He translated the novel to French himself, with the title Démantèlement (‘Dismanteling’, 1982) (also in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Communism and Marxism)
- Mohammed Dib (1920 – 2003, Algeria) – Qui se souvient de la mer (1962, English trans. Who Remembers the Sea, 1985) and Le Talisman (‘the talisman’,1966). This first dreamlike, science fiction novel is set during wartime in Tlemcen, a city not far from the sea in Algeria, which is transformed to into a fantastic world of monsters, moving walls and strange metamorphoses (reference). The confused narrator eventually follows his urban terrorist wife in joining the resistance. Le Talisman is a novella set during and after the independence war and depicts torture, war profiteering, and relations between the Algerian and European communities (reference).
- Tahar Djaout (1954 – 1993, Algeria) – Les chercheurs d’Os (1984, English trans. The Bone Seekers, 2018). After Algeria gains independence, inhabitants of a desert in Algeria seek the bones of their deceased loved ones to bury them properly. The hero of the novel narrates his search, together with an older relative, to find the remains of his older brother. While doing so, he reflects on the sacrifices of the country. He recounts the memories of his brother and the village before and after independence of French colonial rule.
- Assia Djebber’s (written elsewhere as Assiya Jabbār, 1936 – 2015, Algeria) short story collection Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980, English trans. Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, 1992) and La femme sans sepulture (‘The woman without a burial’, 2002).
The collection Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement focuses on the lives of women during pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence Algerian society as they continuously struggle with both patriarchy and colonialism while their country goes through drastic changes. Its characters include women who fought in the independence war and were imprisoned in the Barberousse Prison in Algiers but did not end up getting the recognition they deserve. It also revolves around the homes and families of the women. The title of the collection is derived from a painting by the French artist Eugene Delacroix (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Gender Issues).
La femme sans sepulture rewrites the life of the real Zoulikha Oudia, who was a central figure in the anti-colonial resistance during the Algerian war of liberation. Tortured and killed by the French, this novel gives her a voice after her death which participates in the reconstruction of her life (reference).
- Mouloud Feraoun (1913 – 1962, Algeria) – Journal 1955 – 1962 (1962, English trans. Journal 1955 – 1962: Reflections on the French-Algerian War, 2000). Feraoun, a French educated Algerian writer, chronicled the French-Algerian war in his journal before dying at the hands of the French Organisation Armée Secrète (‘secret army organization’) a month after submitting it to his publisher. Feraoun identified both with the Algerian and French culture, although he was against the French repression. He did not however, identify with the national cause because of the brutality of Algerians themselves towards fellow countrymen.
- ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd bin Hadūqah (1925 – 1996, Algeria) – Rīḥ al-Junūb (‘Southern wind’, 1970). Set in an Algerian village right after independence, this novel portrays ʿĀbid Bin al-Qāḍī, whose daughter was accidentally killed during the war by a bomb planted by the revolutionaries on a train. Her fiancé Mālik was part of the revolutionaries, and the father revenges her death by reporting them, which is followed by retaliation. Meanwhile, the newly imposed land reform policies threaten Mālik’s land, and al-Qāḍī plans to marry Mālik to his second daughter. The novel was made into a movie with the same title by Slim Ryad.
- Mouloud Mammeri’s (1917 – 1989, Algeria) – L’Opium et le bâton (‘Opium and the stick’, 1965). This novel begins in the year 1957, during the Battle of Algiers. Its main protagonist is the Westernized Dr Bachir Lazrak. It reflects on role of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and the French occupation. The novel was made into a 1970 film by Ahmed Rachedi.
- Yamina Méchakra (1949 – 2013, Algeria) – La grotte éclatée (‘The exploded cave’, 1979). Set in a cave which functions as a shelter and a hospital for the revolutionaries, the events of Algeria’s liberation war from 1954 – 1962 are narrated by an anonymous female fighter for the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). Like all combatants, the narrator strives for an independence that will allow her, as much as her fellow men, to enjoy freedom (reference). The novel links the glorification of the liberation war to exploring issues of motherhood when the narrator becomes a single mother, including a criticism of the post-independence nationalist affiliation that negatively effected the position of women (reference) (also in F: Children and Family Life: Parent and Child: Mother and Child and I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Feminism: Feminism and Nationalism).
- Rachid Mimouni (1945 – 1955, Algeria) – Le Fleuve détourné (‘The diverted river’, 1982). In this novel, the protagonist returns to his village following the Algerian War to find his name on the local monument for the dead (reference). As he attempts to rectify the mistake, he discovers the extent of the political and social corruption which has taken hold of Algeria since independence (see for more information D: Death: Death).
- Malika Mokeddem (1949-, Algeria) – Les hommes qui marchent (‘The men who walk’, 1990). This novel is set in Algeria from the mid-1950s to 1960s, during the struggle of independence from France. It portrays how a family, particularly a grandmother, Zohra, and her granddaughter, Leila, react to the changes taking place in the country, both politically and culturally. The novel portrays the struggle against the coloniser and oppressor, which in the case of Zohra began with her forced sedentism, and in the case of Leila is a clear protest against overarching patriarchism (reference).
- Ḥabīb al-Sāʾiḥ (1950-, Algeria) – Ana wa Ḥāyīm (‘Me and Haim’, 2018). This novel follows two Algerian friends, the Muslim Arslān and the Jewish Ḥāyīm, as they grow up to be a philosophy teacher and a pharmacist, respectively, while the country transitions from French colonialism to independence (reference). The two, who come from different religious and class backgrounds, each in their own way become involved in the Algerian independence movement (reference). Arslān joins the armed resistance, while Ḥāyīm smuggles medicine (also in R: Religion and Sectarianism: Judaism and Arab – Jew relationships).
- Leïla Sebbar (1941-, Algeria) – La Seine était rouge (1961, English trans. Seine was red: Paris, October 1961, 1999) and La Confession d’un fou (2011, English trans. Confessions of a Madman, 2016). This first recounts the events in Paris towards the end of the Algerian War, when the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) organized a demonstration to protest the curfew on Algerians in France. The peaceful protest on October 17, 1961, was violently suppressed by the Paris police. Confessions of a Madman focusses on family during the war. As a young man avenges the murder of his estranged father, he looks into his father’s past and discovers his role in the Algerian revolt.
- Al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār (1936 – 2010, Algeria) – Al-Lāz (‘The ace’, 1974) and al-Zilzāl (1974, English trans. The Earthquake, 2000).
This first novel is set in a small Algerian village where a young man nick-named al-Lāz, which in fuṣḥā Arabic means ‘hero’ but in the Algerian dialect means ‘a person whose parents are unknown’, is suspected by the French of helping the Algerian revolutionaries. He is imprisoned and in prison he meets a revolutionary leader who turns out to be his father. After a group of revolutionaries help them escape, al-Lāz becomes integrated in the revolutionary apparatus. By comparing between the behavior of the revolutionaries and the French towards neutral Algerians, al-Lāz criticizes the way the revolutionaries treated their fellow countrymen (reference). The novel is followed by Al-Lāz: al-ʿIshq wa al-Mawt fī al-Zaman al-Harrashi (‘The ace: love and death in terrible times’, 1982).
al-Zilzāl eclipses a period of 10 hours portraying the return of al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-Majīdbū al-Arwāḥ to newly independent Algeria. The Shaykh had owned much land before he fled to Tunisia after the outbreak of the independence war, and when he learns that the new government is planning to re-appropriate agricultural land, he searches for family members to help him. However, he notices the change in Algeria’s social structure: the revolutionaries have become the rich leaders and the previous rich now make up the lower class. He is unable to adapt to the societal changes, slowly becomes mentally ill and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
- Zahūr Wanīsī (1936-, Algeria) – Min Yawmiyyāt Mudarrisah Ḥurrah (‘Diaries of a free teacher’, 1978) and Lūnjah wa al-Ghūl (‘Lujnah and the ogre’, 1993).
This first is an autobiographical novel which describes the author’s experiences as a freedom fighter before Algerian independence, a teacher, and a member of the National Assembly, as it narrates Algeria’s history before and after independence, specifically how Algerian women played a key role in supporting the revolutionaries.
The title Lūnjah wa al-Ghūl refers to a folktale in which a ghūl (an ogre) kidnaps a beautiful woman called Lūnjah, to describe Algeria during the independence war. The ghūl of this novel can be interpreted as being colonialism, while the Lūnjah of the novel, Malīkah, represents Algeria in general. Malīkah’s character also sheds light on how women played an important role during the Algerian war, while after independence their freedom diminished (reference). The novel was ranked as on of the 100 best Arabic novels by the Arab Writers Union (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales).
- Many of Kateb Yacine’s (1929 – 1989, Algeria) plays deal with the Algerian War all from different perspectives, as the writer himself was politically committed to decolonization. Two examples are Le cadavreen cerclé (The encircled corpse, 1954) and Les ancêtres redoublent de férocité (The ancestors redouble their fury, 1959), both part of his theatrical tetralogy Le cercle des représailles (The Circle of Reprisals).
Le cadaver encerclé starts just after the anticolonial uprisings of 1945, in which 45.000 demonstrators were killed by French troops (reference). Its story portrays that of Lakhdar, who is tortured and killed. In Les ancêtres redoublent de férocité, the Vulture, its central figure, advocates for his tribe, the Keblouti tribe, to avenge past killings and thus also a seemingly endless cycle of violence (reference). The Keblouti tribe was known in the nineteenth century for its resistance to Turkish and French invaders, the latter of which smashed down the tribe in 1837 when the French killed their chiefs (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Changes: Tribes and Ethnicity).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Anissa Talahite-Moodly. 2003. “Amrani, Djamal.” Encyclopedia of African Literature. eds. Simon Gikandi, Routledge: New York, p. 29
- Françoise Sule and Christophe Premat. 2018. “Literature and traumas: the narrative of Algerian war in ‘Un regard blesse’ of Rabah Belamri and ‘La Malédiction’ of Rachid Mimouni.” Human and Social Studies. Research and Practice 7(1): 65-79, p. 75, 77
- Jonathan Adjemian. 2016. To Hold the World Visible: Writing and History in the Work of Mohammed Dib. (doctoral dissertation York University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada) Retrieved from https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/32246/Adjemian_Jonathan_2016_PhD.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y p. 5 (last accessed 3 January 2021)
- Anne Donadey. 2008. “African American and Francophone Postcolonial Memory: Octavia Butler’s ‘Kindred’ and Assia Djebar’s ‘La femme sans sépulture’.” Research in African Literatures 39(3): 65-81, p. 67
- Guerroui Mervette. 2017. “La representation de l’histoire algerienne au feminin dans l’oeuvre de Yamina Mechakra ‘La grotte éclattée’.” Langues & Usages 1: 161- 173, p. 167, 169
- Seth Graebner. 2003 “Mimouni, Rachid”, in Encyclopaedia of African Literature. eds. Simon Gikandi, Routledge: New York, p. 460
- Lynda Chouiten. 2016. “Femmes, Code Moral Et Conflict Colonial Dans Les Hommes Qui Marchent De Malika Mokeddem.” La Revue Expressions 1(2): 126-137, p. 127
- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ḥabīb. 2021. “Riwāyāt al-Būkir.. Al-Ḥabīb al-Sāʾiḥ Yarwī Qiṣṣat Muslim wa Yahūdī fī ‘Anā wa Ḥayīm’.” www.youm7.com, 11 October 2021, https://www.youm7.com/story/2021/10/11/%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AD-%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%89-%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%85-%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%87%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%89-%D9%81%D9%89-%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%A7/5490510 (last accessed 1 December 2023)
- ʿAbd al-Razzāq Būqaṭūsh. 2022. “Suʾāl al-Hawiyyah wa al-Tārīkh fī Riwāyat ‘Anā wa Ḥayīm’ lil-Ḥabīb al-Sāʾiḥ.” Majallat al-Wāḥāt lil-Buhūth wa al-Dirāsāt 15(2): 670-686, p. 675
- Hamdi Sakkut. “al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār’s ‘al-Lāz’” in The Arabic Novel: Bibliography and Critical Introduction 1865-1995 p.123- 127
- ʿAbd al-Qādir Kʿabān. 2015. “Buniyyah al-Turāth al-Shʿabī fī Riwāyah ‘Lūnjah wa al-Ghūl’ lil-l-Adībah Zahhūr Wanīdsī.” www.alwatanvoice.com, 29 October 2015, https://pulpit.alwatanvoice.com/articles/2015/10/29/382866.html (last accessed 18 August 2022)
- Clare Finburgh. 2005. “Kateb Yacine’s ‘Le cadavre encerclé’ and ‘Les ancêtres redoublen de férocité’.” Research in African Literatures 36(4): 115-134, p. 115, 120