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60 years of Algerian revolutionary literature

How Algeria influenced the world of revolutionary literature

Published : Saturday, 2 July, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1166
Shahriar Feroze
Shahriar Feroze

Shahriar Feroze

As The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is all set to celebrate its 60th anniversary of independence on 5 July, which Algerian comes to our mind first... of course, the late Algerian statesman Houari Boumédi�ne.  During the early years of our independence, the late Algerian leader offered his unparalleled support to introduce and promote Bangladesh in international forums, bodies and organizations. But a country or any country for that matter is more than just politics and politicians.
However, Algerian literature was never my cup of tea. Rather coincidentally, as I curiously flipped through pages exploring a bit on the Algerian Revolution, a few names struck a chord, namely - Albert Camus, Kateb Yacine and Frantz Fanon.
At school, college and university, I read them from the lenses of a curious juvenile and a student. Only now I realize how deeply they influenced the nationalistic sentiment of the Algerian people, and revolutionaries all across the world. Some of their writings have also been translated into Bangla.
Recently I came across writings of three more prominent writers to have shaped Algerian revolutionary literature with their blazing narratives of colonial oppression and struggle for independence. Unquestionably, revolutions and wars have produced some of the epic literary pieces in the history of mankind. That said - revolutions, liberation wars or struggle for independence are not merely fought with weapons only, the struggle for self-determination begins with a single spark of patriotic spirit within and the rest follows. And when it comes to the extent of revolutionary literature, the literary horizon expands further beyond clichéd French and Bolshevik revolutions.
History of Algerian literature has travelled through centuries of differing conflicts. Ranging from indigenous Berbers, Roman invaders, Muslim Arabs to French colonists - all characters and events of history played a key role in the creation and development of Algerian literature in general.
Perhaps it is because of this reason why it is difficult to give an Algerian writer a specific national identity, and also since most of them wrote in Arabic, French and as well as in their indigenous languages while residing in and out of occupied and free Algeria.  
As the cold war era was reaching its peak in the mid - twentieth century a new type of literature had evolved. It Explored Algeria's struggle for independence and subsequent attempts to establish a new national identity. And it is on this new type of nationalistic and revolutionary literature where we have focused.
Obviously it is never possible to celebrate all Algerian revolutionary writers in a single page, so we decided to select only a handful of six globally renowned writers those who have firsthand witnessed and wrote on Algeria's struggle for independence.
Some of them belong to the pre-independence era, some to the post - independence era and one of them is actually a renowned French pied noir author.
One is even more complex to define whether he is an Algerian or a French first, and that is Albert Camus. His position on the Algerian Revolution and Independence reminded of the chicken and egg situation - which came first. Then again, Camus was surely a sympathiser of Algerian independence but with a divided loyalty. At the end of the day, irrespective of all differences the six writers have massively influenced and shaped Algeria's literary scene where struggle and self-determination for Algerian people became the prominent theme.  
Nevertheless, against the backdrop of the 60th independence anniversary of The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, today we venerate half a dozen globally renowned writers to have defined Algeria and how their writings had deeply influenced worldwide revolutionary literature.
Pen is perhaps mightier than the sword, but at the same time it also prompts you pick up the sword.

Kateb Yacine
One of the most prominent writers to emerge from Algeria during its long and painful split from France was Kateb Yacine. His allegorical 1956 novel "Nedjma" is set against the backdrop of the 1945 Sétif massacre and the growing discontent that would lead to the outbreak of all-out war in 1954.

"Nedjma" tells the story of four young men (Mustapha, Lakhdar, Rachid, Mourad) who fall in love with Nedjma, daughter of an Algerian and a French woman, during the French colonization of Algeria.

The famous novel's political dimension applies specifically to this period. The novel has been compared stylistically with contemporary French works of the Nouveau Roman period.

Trilingual, Kateb Yacine also wrote and supervised the translation of his texts into the Berber language. Most of his works reflect his multi-cultural country's search for identity and the aspirations of its people.

Mohammed Dib
Another writer to address the burgeoning Algerian independence movement is Mohammed Dib, whose novels - "La Grande Maison", "L'Incendie", and "Le Métier � tisser" (collectively known as the Algérie trilogy), set between 1938 and 42, narrate hardships suffered by peasants and workers of Algeria under French colonial rule.

However, Mohammed Dib was expelled from Algeria in 1959 due to his sympathies for the revolution, but was able to settle in France.

Though his early novels had been highly naturalistic and realist, later works such as "Qui se souvient de la mer" addressed the Algerian revolution and its effects using a more surrealist, allegorical and fantastical style. He also published a number of poetry anthologies.
 
Mouloud Feraoun
Mouloud Feraoun was one of the most deeply affected Algerian writers of the revolution. He is a Kabyle novelist (a Berber language spoken by the Kabyle people in the north and northeast of Algeria).

He published several books in the late 50s and early 60s before being assassinated by the OAS, an anti-secession paramilitary group, in 1962. Despite the sad circumstances of his death, Feraoun was never unequivocally in favour of independence, and his novels express something of this ambivalence.

His works mostly describe the writer's native society - life of Berber mountain farmers, poverty, and love for one's homeland, emigration, and repercussions of French colonialism.

Feraoun specifically chose French rulers to inform and educate French audience about contradictions and tensions under colonial rule.
 
Frantz Fanon
Forget fiction, and he was one of the most influential writers on post-colonialism from Algeria or from anywhere. He is the Martinican philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon.

Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" is an important book on psychology of race. The book is also an historical critique on the complex ways in which identity, particularly Blackness, is constructed and produced.

Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale and devoted much of his life supporting the Algerian independence movement.

Fanon's "A Dying Colonialism" and much controversial "The Wretched of the Earth" are more abstract accounts of cultural and political struggles faced by global decolonizing movements.

To this day Frantz Fanon remains one of the most significant philosopher and writer to have written on practical and psychological experiences and goals of colonized people.

Assia Djebar
Following Algerian independence in 1962, some writers attempted to construct a new Algerian identity in an independent state, and one of the prominent writers to have led the movement is Assia Djebar . Under the pen-name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, her novels "Les enfants du nouveau monde" and "Les Alouettes na�ves" written during the 60s concern the actions and experiences of women during the war.

She has since emerged as an important voice in both the post-colonial and feminist movements. Her 1985 novel "L'Amour, La Fantasia" uses a mix of fictional and revisionist history to undermine colonial and patriarchal attitudes. She emphasized experience of women and the complexity of the relationship between a national and a personal identity.

The late Djebar has also worked in films, and in 2005 became the first North African to be appointed to the Académie fran�aise.

Tahir Wattar
Following the Algerian War of Independence, a significant political split took place within Algerian literature between those writing in French and those in Arabic.

Though Fanon and others in the FLN had argued that French should be used by anti-colonial groups to subvert traditional power structures and assumptions, an influential group of Algerian writers considered it as inherently colonialist.

One of the most vocal of these critics is Tahir Wattar, who wrote prolifically in Arabic about the experiences of ordinary Algerian people leading to independence. Though he supported the movement, many of his novels take a bleak view of post-independence Algeria. His literary works such as "Al Laz" (1974) and "The Fisherman and the Palace" (1980) markedly criticized those in power for failing to live up to their ideals.

Yasmina Khadra
Yasmina Khadra is not only a penname, but a tale of how a wife can turn into a shield for a husband's literary pursuits.

Algeria's literary landscape was manifestly affected by the civil war of the 90s, fought between the Algerian government and Islamist rebel groups.

Mohammed Moulessehoul was an officer in the Algerian army during the war - as he witnessed unleashing of horrors and crime he was also writing under the name of his wife, Yasmina Khadra.

His novels depict the damage and bloodshed of the competing ideologies, and appeal of radical Islamism to those alienated by the incompetence and hypocrisy of politicians.

His novel "In the Name of God" focused primarily on the situation in Algeria in that time.

However, in recent years with the official end of hostilities in Algeria, he had converted similar themes in different surroundings with his books "Iraq in The Sirens of Baghdad" and Afghanistan in "Swallows of Kabul".

Albert Camus
The most widely read writer to come out of Algeria, especially in Europe and in the West is the French pied-noir Albert Camus. French writer-philosopher Albert Camus is best-remembered for novels "The Stranger" and "The Plague", and for his absurdist philosophy.

Nevertheless, though regarded a giant in French literature, his brilliance would deliver him from the world of poverty he experienced in French Algeria during his childhood.

Camus represents an Algeria that no longer exists in the world atlas, an Algeria of the pied-noirs.

It is not, however, Camus's writing that is inspiring hostility in the country of his birth but rather his leftist political stance he adopted during the Algerian War for Independence - a largely isolated humanitarian stance that emphasized the cost to the war's victims but earned him enemies on both sides.

The most fascinating aspect of Camus, according to this writer is that he is an Algerian at heart, but very much French when it comes to his literary pursuits.

Nevertheless, marking 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence, we consider his journalistic career in the pre - independence years of Democratic Republic of Algeria to have shaped public opinion in France.


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