Machaho Tellem Chaho

Here are some citations taken from Algerian novelist Tahar Wattar's The Candle and the Corridors : "The candle is small, oh my lord, the passages are big, oh my lord, but light is strong..."  "A man is a passageway and a woman the candlelight..." The artwork used is that of Baya Mahieddine , the great Algerian painter.

Last fall, Algerian novelist Rachid Bouxerroub won the Assia Djebar prize for Best Fiction in Tamazight for his novel Tislit n’oughanim (The Bride of Reeds). The Bride of Reeds is a reference to the small puppet-like toys young girls make from little reed sticks, dress up, and play the bride. Bouxerroub says the name seemed fitting for a story he centred around Fafuc [pronounced Fafush], a young woman in post-independence Algeria who had no control over her own destiny, like an inanimate doll, until she rebelled. This article first appeared on Arab Literature in English. To read the entire article continue here .

The following is a translation of my exchange with the author which was conducted in French. The original appears below.  Zehira Houfani is an Algerian writer who started publishing in the 80s. She published two detective novels among which “ Pirates of the Desert ” in 1986, a story set in Tamanrasset ( Les pirates du desert ) . Few women have written crime fiction in Algeria, in Arabic or in French. Zehira Houfani is one of them and she might even be the first to have published a detective novel in DZ. She now lives in Canada, and from there, she kindly answered a few questions about her experience as a writer in Algeria at the time, and about her detective novel Pirates of the Desert . What brought you to crime fiction initially and what inspired you to write not one detective novel but four of them, two published and two manuscripts? I guess my readings led me to it. This was at least the case for my first novel. Later, two factors encouraged me to pursue this rou