Machaho Tellem Chaho

    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...

  M'hamed Issiakhem seems to have regularly illustrated the work of writers who were his contemporaries. His portrait of Malek Haddad opens the latter's poetry collection ‘ Le malheur en danger ’ (Misfortune in Danger) published by Bouchène editions in 1988:     And the edition of Ismael Ait Djafer's long poem 'The complaint' also published by Bouchene, in 1987, contain Issiakhem's portrait of the poet.     (Photo trouvée sur Albatroz Blog4ever ) Copies of Le malheur en danger are almost impossible to find except in specialised universty libraries so i scanned it here and it can be downloaded as a PDF here . The edition of La complainte by Ait Djafer is no longer in circulation, so I scanned it also, click on the link for a PDF of the copy . I couldn't find a resonably priced copy of the Bouchene edition, but the edition I have and which is placed online here is by Novetlé Massalia and it contains Aït Djafer's second long poem called 'Cri’...

" My material grand-father didn't register my birth on 6 August in Constantine, but in fact he did so twenty days later in Condé-Smendou, a village in the forest, where he was himself a judge or rather the first ghost of the mahkama (tribunal), his anger at being forced to serve justice in the name of the French was so great that he never wore the the enemy's military colours, nor ever agreed to learn the Latin alphabet ". Kateb Yacine in Dialogue, no. 35, November 1966. Excerpt reprinted in Kateb Yacine, un théâtre et trois langues, by Amazigh Kateb et Zebeida Chergui (Seuil editions, 2001) The 6th of August marks the anniversary of the birth of Yacine Kateb. To celebrate him and remember his work, here are some links and references:     WHO WAS YACINE KATEB : - Kateb Yacine, poète en trois langues [IN FRENCH] : Yacine Kateb speaks here about his journey from his early years, born in Chaoui territory, to his family's move to Setif and his f...

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...