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- Aḥmad al-Tawfīq’s (1943-, Morocco) Sujayrat Hinnāʾ wa Qamar (1998, English trans. Moon and Henna Tree, 2013) and Al-Sayl (‘The flood’, 1998).
Sujayrat Hinnāʾ wa Qamar is set in the High Atlas and chronicles the rise and fall of a local, power-thirsty, monarch, Hmmu. The novel makes many literary and historical references as it looks at social relations in the Moroccan mountains, particularly between the potentate and his subjects, but also between the mountains and the coastal cities and between the Amazigh and Arab population over the period of decades (reference).
Al-Sayl is also set in the Atlas and is set in the 19th century when the region was under French control. Its main character is Bazīn, who was raised with a foster family after his mother dies of birth and his father leaves him. After he moves to the city, he joins the movement for independence, forcing his French employer out of the country. He returns to his village, only to be so disillusioned with his life that he becomes mad (reference).
- Rachid Boudjedra (written elsewhere as Rashīd Būjdirah, 1941-, Algeria) – Topographie idéale pour une aggression caractérisée (‘Ideal topography for a specific aggression’, 1975) narrates the story of an unnamed illiterate Amazigh peasant who moves to France to find work but is overwhelmed with its scenes and events. The novel portrays the workers’ migration from Morocco to Franch in the 1970s.
- Ṭāriq Bakārī (1988-, Morocco) – Nūmīdiyyā (‘Numedia’, 2015), focusses on the Amazigh identity in Morocco. When Murād impregnates his girlfriend, he flees to France where he ends up spending 25 years and meets a woman named Jūliya. They return to Morocco to buy a small hotel in the Atlas Mountains, where Murād is confronted with his unresolved issues related to his first girlfriend committing suicide and starts to see a therapist (reference). But Jūliya buys his medical file and uses it to write a novel. Murād eventually discovers that his only value to her is as a case study and returns to his village where he finally marries Nūmīdiyyā, a mute Amazigh woman. It is in her that he eventually sees and accepts his Amazigh identity.
- Djaffar Chetouane (1968-, Algeria) – Donkey Heart, Monkey Mind (2011). Written in English, this novel tells the story of a young Amazigh living in Algeria in the 1980s and the hardships the Amazigh people are confronted with. He is brutally beaten by the police when he participates in protests, and decides to travel, posing with different identities to escape his faith, until he is arrested and imprisoned in a remote military prison following the ‘Black October’ Algerian political riots (see 1988 Popular Uprisings in Algeria).
- Nabile Farès (1940 – 2016, Algeria / France) – La Mort de Salah Baye ou la vie obscure d’un Maghrébin (‘The death of Salah Baye or the obscure life of a North African’, 1980). Focussing on the Amazigh population in Algeria, this novel depicts the despair of those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves at the mercy of whoever happens to be in power (reference). Disillusioned with his exile in France, Salah Baye returns to Algeria on the request of his brother who works on a farm that has been nationalized (reference). On arrival, he learns that his brother has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and starts an investigation which leads to his arrest, torture, and rape, and a disastrous end once released.
- Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine (1941 – 1995, Morocco), as one of the most prominent Amazigh writers and poet, wrote several novels that cemtered the Amazigh experience. An example is his novel Il était une fois un vieux couple heureux (‘Once upon a time there was a happy couple’, 1993), which portrays a married couple who for over three decades have lived in Djebel Lekest mountains and spend their days with simple everyday life (reference). The novel shows the love between the barren wife and the poet and storyteller husband, who writes in Tifinagh, the alphabet of the Tuareg Amazigh.
- Aicha Lemsine (1942-, Algeria) – La Chrysalide: chroniques algériennes (‘The chrysalis: Algerian chronicles’, 1976). With its focus on Khadidja, who lives in an Algerian village, and Faïza, who lives in the capital city, the novel reflects on the life of women in Algeria during the war of liberation and independence (reference) (see 1954 – 1962 French Algerian War and Algeria Independence).
- Mouloud Mammeri’s (1917 – 1989, Algeria) is another 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 around World War II. The author himself was conscripted into the French army during the same war (also in 1940 – 1945 World War II).
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.
- Bahāʾ Ṭāhir (1935-, Egypt) – Waḥāt al-Ghurūb (2007, English trans. Sunset Oasis, 2009), portrays the experience of an Egyptian district commissioner in Siwa Oasis under British colonial rule at the end of the nineteenth century. It describes the reaction of the Amazigh population when the commissioner, together with his Irish wife Kāthārīn, moves to Wāḥa. This novel won the International Prize of Arabic Fiction in 2008 (reference) (also in history 1882 British Occupation of Egypt).
- Kateb Yacine’s (1929 – 1989, Algeria) short work Dihyaou la Kahina des Aurès (‘Dihya or the Kahina of the Aures’, ?) draws attention to the question of Amazigh identity and language in the context of official Algerian nationalism through reference to Dihya al-Kahina, Amazigh queen of the Aurès and religious and military leader of the resistance to the Arab-Muslim invasion of North Africa in the 7th (reference).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Ḥassan Bibrine. 2023. “145 Riwāyat Sujayrat Hinnāʾ wa Qamar Aḥmad al-Tawfīq #Taḥadī al-Qirāʾa al-ʿArabī.” Youtube, 18 September 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVEs9f5Rev4 (last accessed 19 January 2024)
- Jamīl Ḥamadāwī. 2007. “al-Khaṭīʾah wa al-Takfīr fī Riwāyat al-Sayl li-Aḥmad Tawfīq. Bi-Qalam: Dr. Jamīl Ḥamadāwī.” www.pulpit.alwatanvoice.com, 30 December 2007, https://pulpit.alwatanvoice.com/articles/2007/12/30/116652.html (last accessed 19 January 2024)
- Khaled El Aref. 2016. “I Speak Tamazight, but in Arabic: Contesting the Cultural Terrain in Morocco.” International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences,70-83, p. 73
- EAL, p. 220
- Mohammed Fridi. 2018. “La mer comme espace luminaire dans ‘La Mort de Salah Baye ou la vie obscure d’un Maghrébin’ de Nabile Farès.” Expression maghrébin, 17(2): 91-110, p. 93
- Mourad Kusserow. 2004. “An Intimate Look at Berber Culture.” www.qantara.de, 5 October 2004, https://qantara.de/en/article/mohammed-khair-eddine-intimate-look-berber-culture (last accessed 20 March 2024)
- Saida Bounouacha. 2020. Le réalisme dans La Chrysakude d’Aïcha Lemisine. (Masters’ Thesis, Université Kasdi Merbah Ouargla, Algeria) Retrieved from https://dspace.univ-ouargla.dz/jspui/handle/123456789/25865?mode=simple (last accessed 20 January, 2024), p. 18-19
- Mary Youssef and Fazwy Yaram. 2015. “The Aesthetics of Difference: History and Representations of Otherness in ‘al-Nubi’ and ‘Wahat al-Ghurub’.” AJCP 35: 75-99
- Madeleine Dobie. 2017. “Locating Algerian Literature in the World Literature.” MEL 20(1): 78-90 p. 85