Machaho Tellem Chaho

Algerian novelist Assia Djebar passed away one year ago, on 6 February 2015. Her novel Le Blanc d'Algérie (translated as Algerian White by David Kelley and Marjolihn De Jager) remains one of her must read.

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...

While sex, drugs and pizzas have been stable story elements in Algerian novels over the past decade (for pizzas, read Chawki Amari), a prominent place given to smoking seems relatively new to me in our fiction as far as my readings go. Algerian novelist Fatma Zohra Zamoum has given an amusing and original twist to this ever present, highly enjoyed, and deadly social activity. Read the full review on Arabic Literature in English .

In 2015, Algerian literature was marked by great authors. Find out what these novels were and who their authors are on Arab Lit in Literature : 2015 in Algerian Literature: Five to Watch

Interested in Algerian myths and legends ? Here is a discussion around Zoubeida Mameria ’s three-volume collection of Algerian myths,  Tales from the Land of Algeria ( Contes du Terroir Algerien , 2013 ) on Arabic Literature in English . * * * * * I am sitting on the steps outside my flat with Zoubeida Mameria ’s weighty three-volume collection of Algerian myths,  Tales from the Land of Algeria ( Contes du Terroir Algerien , 2013 )  on my lap. I am browsing through her collection, looking for a story involving plumbers. ADVERTISEMENT Mameria is from the central Algerian city of Souk Ahras and so, she says, are her stories. She warns in her introduction that she has chosen to recount “in an impressionistic manner” the tales her granddad and great aunts used to tell her. She qualifies her storytelling as impressionistic because she has not recorded the stories she was told. Instead, she is recrafting stories that she considers Algerian but that ...

"Qallek : buss l kleb men femmu 7ta teqdi 7djetek mennu" "Embrasse le chien sur son museau jusqu’à ce que tu ais obtenu ce que tu désires" "Kiss a dog on his muzzle until you obtain what you want from him" no. 201 Great way to say 'do what you have to do'! Old proverbs and wisdoms are always so charming and visual, as is this collection of Algerian proberbs in Derja. l-klam fi weqtu dewa . Lemtoul enta3 'z'men (Proverbs of old) is a small book packed full of Algerian proverbs collected by Fakira-Wassila Douar, a researcher who has concentrated on wisdoms that are, or were, used specifically in Algiers. This 122 pages book was published by Dar El Othmania in 2013, and contains 337 sayings, plus 12 buqalat (بوقالات).  Each proverb is given in the Algerian language, written in latin transcription and in Arabic transcription. The proverb is then translated into French (by M. Amine Mehrez), and many of them are foll...

The Chrysalis   is a novel by Algerian novelist Aïcha Lemsine. The English version was translated from the French   La Chrysalide   by Dorothy S. Blair who has done a splendid job, at no point did I sense this was a translation apart from the use of "old chum" that I cannot imagine any North African using in English to convey something like   mon cher .  It was published in 1976 in French by Editions des femmes and picked up by Quartet books who published it in English in 1993. In the English version, the book opens with an Introdution penned by the author dated 1993, at a time when the situation had seriously deteriorated in Algeria.  In this intro, Lemsine has an amusing little rant: "Exposing the archaic condition of women at the time of Socialism in Algeria was not without risk... In fact, while readers and critics in Tunisia, Morocco and Europe were almost unanimous in their enthusiastic welcome of the Chrysalis, in Algeria the book was...

"- Why should I change? My personality does not vary according to my residence." "- As for me, I adapt to all environments." The Mauve Planet by Safia Ketou Safia Ketou (of her real name Zohra Rabhi) is an Algerian short-story writer who wrote in French. She was born in 1944, in  Aïn-Séfra . From 1962 to 1969 she was a primary school teacher in Aïn-Séfra and then moved to Algiers where she worked as a journalist for several daily newspapers like APS, Horizon, Algérie Actualité. She committed suicide in 1989 and was buried at the cemetry of Sidi Boudjemaa, in Aïn-Séfra. In Algeria, a literary group and NGO bears her name .    Safia Ketou wrote short stories, and children story books.  She published a collection of poetry, Citar Friend  ( Amie Cithare ) in 1979, and a play called Asma.  Her short story collection The Mauve Planet  ( La Planète Mauve   et Autres Nouvelles ) was published in 1983. Safia Ketou is...