- Nabile Farès (1940 – 2016, Algeria / France) – Passager de l’Occident (‘A Passenger from the west’, 1971) and his triology La Découverte du nouveau monde (‘The discovery of the new world’) which consists of Le Champ des Oliviers (‘The field of olive trees’, 1972), Mémoire de l’absent (‘Memory of the absent’, 1974) and L’Exil et le désarroi (‘Exile and disorder’, 1976).
Farès in these novels traces the Algerian past through mixing cultural elements of Amazigh, Muslim, and French influences. Farès’ work is heavily influenced by Afro-American writer James Baldwin, as his novels echo many of Baldwin’s thoughts on identity and racial/ethnic marginalization in the time that both lived in Paris, France (reference). In the opening passages of Passager de l’Occident the author’s character, the eternally exiled Brady Fax, reproduces an actual interview between the author and Baldwin.
- Faïza Guène (1985-, France / Algeria) – Kiffe Kiffe Demain (2002, English trans. Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, 2006). Guène was only nineteen when her novel about Doria, a second-generation Franco-Maghrebi, or ‘beur’, was published. Doria, abandonment by her father who left for Morocco to marry a young woman, narrates her life while criticizing both the patriarchy of North African society and the poor socio-economic and political conditions of Arab and Muslim immigrants and their beur children. The novel also reflects on the fact that Arab migrants are ‘permanent outsiders’, both the French society they live in, and Arab society they come from (reference) (also in F: Family Life: Children and Adolescents: Bildungsroman: Female Arabic Bildungsroman).
- Khawlah Ḥamdī (1984-, Tunisia) – Ghurbah al-Yāsmīn (‘Yasmine’s exile’, 2015). This novel takes place in France and describes the experience of three Muslims: Yāsmīn, ʿAmr, and Ranīm (reference). The novel questions how a Muslim can live in the West without being classified or looked at as a terrorist. Yāsmīn has a doctoral degree in social sciences and wishes to research suicide. However, she also wears a headscarf, a fact that leads to her suffering from discrimination despite her academic excellence. ʿAmr, who is Yāsmīn’s friend and a clean-energy scientist, is accused of being a terrorist while the Egyptian lawyer Ranīn defends his case (also in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Terrorism).
- Suhayl Idrīss (1925 – 2008, Lebanon) – Al-Ḥayy al-Lātīnī (‘The Latin Quarter’, 1953), containing autobiographical elements, this novel portrays the emotional and cultural conflicts experienced by Arab male students in Paris before returning home (reference). The narrator, liberated from the traditions of his native culture, sets out to live his life at the highest pitch, as he develops a relationship with French women, through which cultural differences become apparent. Al-Ḥayy al-Lātīnī is not the Bildungsroman only of the central character, but of almost all the Arab characters studying in Paris (reference) (also in F: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents).
- Raymūn Jabārah’s (1935 – 2015, Lebanon) play Man Qaṭaf Zahrat al-Kharīf? (‘Who plucked the autumn bloom?’, 1992). Written in the Lebanese dialect, this play tells the story of two Lebanese men, a musician and a paralyzed actor, who, having no family in their home country, migrated to Paris to live in a shared room with two beds, a table, and two chairs (reference). The play reflects on both men and their position towards both Lebanon and the French society, particularly as being artists (see also D: Disabilities, Illness and Psychological disorders: Paralysis and L: Language and Dialects: Dialect: Lebanese dialect).
- Leïla Marouane (1960-, Algeria) – La Vie sexuelle d’un islamiste à Paris (2007, English trans. The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris, 2010). Mohamed, a narcissistic and wealthy Algerian French banker coming from a devout Islamic family, moves away from his mother’s house in the Parisian suburbs, to a sumptuous apartment in the exclusive French neighborhood of the sixth arrondissement. He then changes his name to Basile and experiences a personal crisis as he becomes torn between “his mother’s traditional role expectations, his cousin’s hedonistic behavior and his own desire for experiencing sexuality free from cultural and social norms” (reference) (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Gender Issues).
- Leïla Sebbar (1941-, Algeria) wrote several literary works in French that focus on Algerians living exile in France. Fatima ou les Algériennes au square (‘Fatima or the Algerians on the square’, 1981), for example, revolves around the generational conflict between first-generation Algerian immigrant women in France who have limited interaction with French society as they live in a traditional and secluded community of Algerians, and their children who are ‘assimilated’ into French culture and society (reference).
Sebbar also wrote a trilogy that includes Shérazade 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts (1982, English trans. Sherazade : Aged 17, Dark Curly Hair, Green Eyes, Missing, 1991), Les carnets de Shérazade (‘Scheherazade’s Notebooks’, 1985) and Le fou de Shérazade (‘Crazy about Scheherazade’, 1991). This series, written over a period of ten years, centres a 17-year-old female character from Algerian descent, Shérazade, living in France. It describes the young ‘beur’ woman’s struggle to find her identity in “a French society laden with stereotypes and misconceptions about the Maghrib” (reference) (see for more information in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales: One Thousand and One Nights).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Valérie K. Orlando. “No Name in the Street for Passengers in the West: Nabile Farès, James Baldwin, and Conversations of Alienation” in Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile, eds. Valerie K. Orlando and Pamela A. Pears, pp. 41- 63, p. 41
- Brinda J. Mehta. 2010. “Negotiating Arab-Muslim Identity, Contested Citizenship, and Gender Ideologies in the Parisian Housing Projects: Faïza Guène’s ‘Kiffe Kiffe demain’.” Research in African Literatures 41(2): 173-202, p. 173, 175
- Assawsana. 2021. “Riwāyat ‘Ghurbah al-Yāsmīn’ lil-Kātibah Khūlah Ḥamdī.” 28 January 2021, https://www.assawsana.com/article/493974 (last accessed 6 December 2023)
- EAL, p. 388
- Nedal M. al-Mousa. 1993. The Arabic Bildungsroman: A Generic Appraisal, p. 231
- Najla Nakhlé-Cerruti. 2016. “Du théâtre philosophique : les multiples voix du théâtre de Raymond Ğbrāra, ou l’affirmation du genre en dialecte ” in La Littérature Arabe Dialectale: Un Partimoine Vivant, eds. Sobhi Boustani and Marie-Aimée Germanos, Karthala: Paris, pp. 91-111, p. 95, 97
- Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner. 2017. “Masculinités en crise. ‘Ravisseur’ et ‘La Vie sexuelle d’un islamiste à Paris’ de Leïla Marouane” in Masculinités maghrébines: Nouvelles perspectives sur la culture, la littérature et le cinéma, eds. Michael Gebhard and Claudia Gronemann, pp 210-222, p. 210
- Khairbani Dalia. 2017. “L’Immigration dans l’oevre de Leïla Sebbar.” Cahiers de langue et de littérature 1(10): 69-78, p. 71-72
- Nicole Kaplan. 2001. “Re-visualising Beur identity in Sebbar’s trilogy”, in The Journal of North African Studies 6(4): 27-46, p. 30