- Al-Sayyid Walid Abāh (?, Mauritania) – al-Shanqīṭī (‘Chinguetti’, 2021). Named after the historic kasba and medieval trading center located in the north of Mauritania, this novel describes the relation between religion and politics, science, and governance and the different inhabitants of the desert village. The main character of the novel is a young man receiving religious education both inside and outside of the village. As the novel describes the hero’s life story, the reader learns about the history of Northwest Africa, including the different ruling Amazigh Dynasties, as well as its historical religious, economic and science exchange with the rest of the Arabic-speaking world.
- Tahar Djaout (1954 – 1993, Algeria) – L’Invention du Desert (‘The invention of the desert’, 1987). This novel links the desert to the history of the Algerian nation. Its narrator is tasked with writing the story of Ibn Toumert, the founder of the Almohades Dynasty (reference). The novel is divided in two parts, in one the reader learns about the history of the Almohads and Almoravids Amazigh empire. In the second the narrator himself travels to learn more about his topic of writing and is especially captivated by the Algerian desert. The novel also invites the reader to reflect on different periods of religious fundamentalism in Algeria (reference) (also in N: Nature: Desert).
- Al-Bashīr Khurayyif (1917 – 1983, Tunisia) – Barq al-Layl (Lightening in the night’, 1961). This novel portrays life during the Hafsid dynasty (1229 – 1574), including the Spanish invasion in 1535. This invasion is used as an analogy to the French occupation of Tunisia in modern times (reference). The narrative, however, centers a love story between a black slave, the protagonist of the novel called Barq al-Layl, and Rīm, one of the wives of his owner (reference). Through Barq, the novel criticizes both social and racial classes and social hypocrisy in historical and modern Tunisian society (also below in Historical Novels on Slavery).
- Aḥmad Tawfīq (1943-, Morocco) – Jārāt abī Mūsa (‘The neighbours of Abī Mūsā’, 1997). This novel is set during a tumulus period of uprisings against the Marinid dynasty (1248 – 1465). The Marinid king travels to the eastern region in the company of his qādī and the qādī’s wife, Shāmah, to silence the uprising. During the travels however, the qādī drowns in a river, after which his widowed wife marries an Andalusian man with whom she then lives in a hotel. The novel depicts the hotel and its inhabitants as a representation of 14th century Morocco, where people of different religions and ethnicities can be found, and different languages can be heard (reference).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Réda Bensmaïa and Denise Davia. 1999. “Postcolonial Nations: Political or Poetic Allegories? (On Tahar Djaout’s ‘L’invention du désert’.” Research in African Literatures 30(3): 151-163, p. 153
- Paul Starkey. 1997. “Some Aspects of the French Colonial Legacy in the Tunisian Novel of the 1960s and 1970s.” Oriente Moderno 77(2/3): 151-161, p. 152
- Samir Marzouki. 2008. “Fiction Historique et Subversion: Barq Ellil de Béchir Khareïef.” Revue de literature compare, 3(327): 367-377, p.371
- ʿAbd Allah Sarḍāwī. 2013. “Jārāt Abī Mūsā: Bayn al-Kalimah wa-al-Ṣūrah.” www.aladabia.net, 27 December 2013 https://www.aladabia.net/sarticle.php?id=11726&&sid=215&&stype=5_1 (last accessed 23 November 2021)