Machaho Tellem Chaho

Nina Bouraoui's new novel Beaux rivages (Beautiful shores) is about to be released. And what a delicious novel it is . Reviewed in French for TSA : Ce nouvel écrit, dont l’histoire est située à Paris entre deux dates très contemporaines, juste après les attentats de janvier 2015 et à l’aube de ceux du Bataclan, explore le grand thème de la trahison amoureuse à l’ère numérique. A., la narratrice vit et travaille dans la capitale française. Elle prête sa voix aux actrices, elle est doubleuse. Cet emploi lui permet de mener une vie confortable et de passer son temps libre à voyager. Elle est en couple avec Adrian depuis 8 ans. Lui vit en Suisse où il dirige une galerie d’art. Elle et Adrian sont plus qu’amants, ils se sont promis l’un à l’autre, et si le mariage n’a pas scellé leur relation sur papier, ils se sont toujours dit qu’ils finiraient leurs jours ensemble. Mais ça, c’était avant le SMS d’Adrian qu’elle reçoit sans aucun préliminaire, et...

The 19 volume of Riveneuve editions' literary magazine published in the spring of 2015 focused on Algeria. It argues that there is a nahda in Algerian literature based on what it calls 'the emergence' of novels that speak of the 90s, a proof of this 'renewal' or 'renaissance'. I entirely disagree. Here's why, in French on HuffPost Algerie : Is there a nahda in Algerian literature ? Il y a-t-il une nahda des lettres algériennes ? C'est la question que pose le numéro 19 de la revue littéraire Continents des éditions Riveneuve, et à laquelle il répond à l'affirmative dans cette anthologie de textes d'auteurs algériens et français, textes de fiction ou de non-fiction. Ce numéro 19 intitulé "Algérie : la nahda des lettres - la renaissance des mots", publié au printemps 2015, est entièrement dédié à la question d'une renaissance littéraire en Algérie. Dans ce volume, et dès l'introduction, Gilles Kraemer, direct...

Yasmina Khadra, Fellag, Abdelfetah Shehada, Chinua Achebe and Amari Chawki. Oh yes. Book recommendations in French on TSA here .

I was asked to review a novel recently, the story of which I didn't respond to very well. Not only did the novel turn out to be yet another male writer building a story on a sole character who only looks at its own navel, in poor prose, it was also another story from a male writer who speaks as a woman in the first person and depicts the rape of a woman, and female prostitution. I suddenly realised that publishing houses in Algeria are letting a specific genre developping, that of the egocentric novel, but also that, more worryingly, editors in Algeria and in France are regularly publishing, if not downright promoting, rape narratives recounted by a female character itself told by a male voice, that of the writer. While it could make for a great way to approach that kind of topic, it has made for linear, poor and what's worse: apologists' stories. Very disturbing. My review of the novel and my critique of the genre are on TSA in French and below : La porte de...

I've been addicted to crime fiction for a while and to Algerian crime fiction for a good four years. It was therefore about time that I put to pen a short guide with a top 10! It can be found here on HuffPost Algerie , in French and below. Meanwhile, my hunt continues in English with this page dedicated to the genre in Algeria . Il existe plusieurs types de guides sur l'Algérie. Des guides géographiques, gastronomiques, artistiques, historiques, et même politiques. Lorsque les guides littéraires seront écrits, il faudra qu'ils réservent un glorieux chapitre aux intrigues, aux meurtres punis, à la justice rétablie, aux incorruptibles grincheux et aux explorations urbaines. En bref : au roman policier algérien. (1) Le roman policier algérien est un genre peu visible en Algérie et encore plus au-delà. Les maisons d'éditions algériennes en éditent peu, les médias n'en parlent pas, en dépit d'un lectorat qui raffole de secrets révélés. Malgré ce man...

Ma bataille d’Alger   de Ted Morgan,  Tallandier editions, France (17 mars 2016, pp. 352) translated from the English into French by Alfred de Montesquiou, reporter for Paris Match . In 2006, prominent journalist Ted Morgan published his memoirs of his military service with the French army, spent in Algeria between 1956 and 1957. His book went largely unnoticed in Algeria then, but its translated version into French just published by Tallendier editions has created quite a bit of stir. Mostly in a tea cup. My review in French of his memoirs can be found here on TSA :  Ma Bataille d’Alger , le témoignage du grand journaliste américain Ted Morgan, présent en Algérie durant la période de la bataille d’Alger en tant qu’appelé de l’armée française, vient de paraître en France aux éditions Tallandier (Mars 2016). Cette parution est en fait la traduction de son récit My Battle of Algiers publié en 2006, aux États Unis chez Harper Collins. Dans cet ouv...

My review in French in El Watan newspaper : The garden by the house (الجنة قريبة من البيت) Abdelfetah Shehada MIM editions, 2015 La littérature algérienne a toujours porté des voix d’auteurs qui aiment faire tomber les frontières entre rêve et réalité, entre conte et voix d’oracle. Cet espace transitoire est exploré dans un petit roman d’Abdelfetah Shehada, Le jardin près de la maison*, récemment publié aux éditions MIM. Dans cette fiction, la dimension que Shehada dessine en effaçant peu à peu la séparation entre un réel palpable et l’hallucination se situe au sein d’un espace antédiluvien et familier : les jardins qui nous entourent. L’histoire s’ouvre dans un jardin public, celui dans lequel Hussein se promène depuis l’enfance, et avec lequel il garde un lien tout particulier. Il y rencontre un vieil homme errant, qui lui demande de le mener vers «le chemin». L’ancien cherche un chemin singulier, «celui de la mémoire». Hussein, in...

Thanks to Arab Lit in English for having run my "interview" with an anonymous 19th century authoress. In the autumn of 1859, an unaccompanied English lady left the UK to travel through Africa for the winter. Leaving Paris for Marseilles toward the end of October, she set sail heading for Algeria on a steamer with hundreds of other passengers. She arrived in Algiers after night-fall two days later and from the capital, her exploration of Algeria began, one that lasted several months. Post-travel, this tourist-explorer turned her observations of Algeria into a travel book that was published in 1863. Through Algeria , the travel tales and observations of this traveller, has come down to us today via Darf Publishers who reprinted it in 1984. Although the author is no longer alive, her first person account very much is. Vivacious, sharp and witty, her judgemental and conflicted text makes for a mine of information on the state of both Algeria and Europe barely 3...

Fancy reading about Algeria in non-fiction form, away from linear political analyses or disconnected social studies ? Well you can with these short and daily chronicles written by Matarese and Meddi, two journalists who have written down their daily experiences of Algeria - from which Meddi is native and in which Matarese has lived in for 10 years. My review in French on HuffPost Algérie : Dans le champ des maisons d'édition indépendantes en France, les éditions Riveneuve se démarquent depuis leurs premières publications par leur intérêt pour "les littératures ouvertes sur le monde" et les "histoires de destins humains engagés ". Ainsi, Riveneuve publient depuis 2008 une collection intitulée "Jours Tranquilles", une série de récits d'auteurs qui ont précédemment mené leur lecteurs à découvrir autrement des villes comme Beyrouth, le Caire, Tunis, Kaboul, Ramallah, Gaza ou l'Est européen réunifié. C'est dans cette collection...

A code from a mirage (شيفرة من سراب)  by Ismael Ben Saada Chihab editions,  published in 2008, pp. 283. My review in French on TSA : L’histoire se situe en 1968. Yacoub Mayer, algérien de naissance, est un espion de la CIA. Il est souvent à Alger, une ville dépeinte comme un terrain de jeux d’espionnage internationaux. Lors d’un de ses séjours dans la capitale, il est soudainement accosté par Francesca, l’épouse de Cherif Khan, un ancien collègue. Elle lui transmet un message. Son époux veut le rencontrer en secret. Khan est aussi espion en Algérie. Durant la guerre d’indépendance, il avait été recruté par les services français et en avait profité pour transmettre des infos classifiées aux Algériens. À l’indépendance, Cherif Khan change de camp et travaille pour les Italiens... continue reading here ... ---- Very saddened to hear from his editor on 11 July that Ben Saada passed away.

Yasmina Khadra's latest novel Dieu n'habite pas La Havane [God doesn't live in the Havana] will be released on August 18 simulaneously in Algeria and France (respectivally Casbah and Julliard). Want to have a hint of what you'll find in it? Here's my review on HuffPost Algerie: read here .

Two Algerian publishers are very active in bringing literatures from African authors to Algerian bookshops. Barzakh editions and Apic editions throughout their respective collections ‘Lands in Solidarity’ and ‘Resonances’ do this. What is it that they do exactly and why ? Here's part of the answer in this article : Résonances was born in October 2007 during Algiers’ International book fair [SILA], on the occasion of which we published three titles La fête des masques   [The Masks’ Party] by Sami Tchak, La géographie du danger  [The Geography of Fear] by Hamid Skif and Ma planète me monte à la tête   [My planet is going to my head] by Anouar Benmalek. This collection gathers texts by African authors published outside of the continent and to whom we wanted to give visibility in Algeria, to circumvent literary borders. That’s how texts by Rabah Belamri (Algeria), Habib Tengour (Algeria), Louis Philipe Dalembert (Haïti), Tierno Monénmebo (Guinea), Yambo Ouol...

Abdelkader Djemaï is an Algerian author with several novels and essays to his name. Seuil editions in France have just published his new novel Abbot Lambert's (almost) true life, a biography retracing the life of the 33rd mayor of Wahran who was in post during colonialisation between 13 May 1934 and 18 July 1942. Here is my review of his novel on HuffPost Algérie , in French.

Today, commemorations in Guelma, Setif and Kerrata (Algeria), and their surrounding area are taking place. 8 May 1945 has another significance in Algeria. On that day, and for about a month, the French colonial authorities and civilians took it upon themselves to massacre the Algerian population, men women and children, to punish a group of Algerians who had gone out to celebrate the end of the second world war - a struggle in which Algerians participated as soldiers for the allies - and who marched bearing the Algerian flag, asking for the same right to freedom as these nations.  Francis Zamponi, a French-Algerian writer, was one of the first to net a historical novel around these massacres against the Algerian population. While creating a work of fiction, Zamponi has helped bringing to the fore key historical elements and facts to the public knowledge. Here is my review of his novel for HuffPost Algerie in French The Butcher of Guelma, one of the first novels that has re...

Ahlem Mosteghanemi graced Alef Bookstore in London on Thursday 28 April to celebrate the launch of her novel عابر سرير translated into English as Dust of Promises (translation by Nancy Roberts, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). Dust of Promises is the last of the three novels which form the renown trilogy of the author. The first,  ذاكرة الجسد , published in 1993 in Arabic, became a massive best seller, turning the author into a household name and a cornerstone of romance literature in Arabic. ذاكرة الجسد was translated by the American University of Cairo Press (2000) as Memory in the Flesh but the translation was, it has been said, a disapointment for the author. Bloomsbury Publishing then took on the task of retranslating into English not only ذاكرة الجسد , now The Bridges of Constantine (2014, translated by Raphael Cohen), but the next two novels, Chaos of the Senses released in 2015 (فوضى الحواس) and now Dust of Promises (عابر سرير) published in January 2016, with b...

Here are April's book recommendations from Algeria Writes , with special features and new releases in Algeria this month. All items are reviewed in English or in French - click on each picture or title to be redirected. Happy reading...!

‏ كُميكس‬ فاطمة انپاراپلي بقلم صافية ورزكي, رسوم محمود بن عمر و سامية ورزكي (Dalimen editions 2014)   Fatma n'parapli   written in Algerian Derja by Safia Ouarezki,  ink by Samia Ouarezki and drawings by Mahmoud Benameur   (published by Editions Dalimen in 2014) In Algiers' Casbah, children are playing and telling each other spooky stories inspired by neighbourhood gossip. "Fatma of the many umbrellas" and "Lalahoum" are two local women who live on their own. Lalahoum gets by, repairing shoes and administering natural and 'supernatural' remedies to women who are in need of comforting and support. Fatma collects broken umbrellas she finds thrown around and repairs them. These two women, while very much part of the social-scape of their neighbourhood, nonetheless stand out. They both charm and frighten those around them, their singularity allows them a certain freedom of action, one otherwise not auth...

Quand on pense « littérature algérienne », on pense à ses auteurs, à son corpus et à tous les synonymes auxquels on associe les thèmes qu’elle aborde… années 70, années 90, torture, injustices, illégitimité, métamorphoses monstrueuses, déception nationale à l’échelle galactique. Bref, dégoutage. Les romans qui composent la littérature algérienne, de par leurs sujets, peuvent ainsi sembler être la somme d’histoires déprimantes, l’issue desquelles est très souvent, pour ne pas dire toujours, pire que le début. Une littérature à priori noire, et plutôt macabre. Mais dans ce jeune corpus toujours grandissant, il existe aussi des histoires qui se terminent « bien » pour le dire platement, des histoires pleines de notes positives et des styles d’écritures séduisants, drôles et ingénieux, qui mènent à une lecture enrichissante et presque joyeuse.  Preuves à l’appui ? Voici cinq lectures pour commencer un printemps acidulé-sucré sur un ton ...