Crime fiction has been part of the literary production in Algeria for over 60 years. Records show that initially, crime fiction writers published serialised stories in newspapers. A prime example of this is the journalist Ahmed Chenouf-Boudi who wrote detective and spy stories serialised weekly in El-Nasr newspaper between 20 September 1967 and 7 October 1967, and from 1968 in Algérie-Actualités. But in 1970, SNED editions, the acronym of the National Publishing and Broadcasting Company , took an editorial decision that opened new opportunities for writers. In that year, the SNED published four crime novels written by Youcef Kader, the pen name of Roger Vilatimo, a novelist of Catalan origin and an author who would continue writing for years under many a pseudonym. It seems that it is from the publication of these four spy/crime novels that the door fully welcomed crime fiction as books. In that year, the Algerian detective novel was born. Since then, imaginary A...
God et la trinité (God and the trinity) is a detective novel by Assia Dridi. Assia was born in Tebessa in 1949, from an Algerian father, and an Egyptian mother. I learnt about this novel from the recent recension of Algerian dectective novel by Dr Issam Boulksibat (University of Oum el Bouaghi), guided in his research by Prof. Saïdi (from the University of Batna) ( see discussion here ). As discovered by Dr Boulksibat, critics slammed this novel when it came out - a critic in particular called Jean Déjeux, a scholar who has written several studies on Algerian literature written in French. It looks like Assia was criticised for two things. First, she posed nude on the back cover, and it seems to have rattled stuffy boys. Apparently, Assia was working for the photography section of the adult magazine called Lui ( Him), a mag that published nude photos, kind of soft porn) and this might have inspired her choice of an author's photo. Personally, I see it as a young wo...