Narrative
Le Village des asphodèles
Not translated into English
Ali Boumahdi · 1970
Synopsis
Berrouaghia, a large market town of the Titteri, in the thirties, forties and fifties. A child learns about the world there between the Quranic school and the French school, under a father who rules without sharing power, among proud great families and poor tribes, while the world of the settlers remains on the other side of a border that no one crosses. Then new men arrive, with new ideas.
Context
A diploma obtained at school had saved its author from the fate of his playmates, condemned to illiteracy; he was teaching in a French lycée when Robert Laffont published the book, in 1970, under a cover by Jacqueline Duhème and with the word récit on the title page. Four hundred and thirty-seven pages in which nothing is invented and in which the town is named. Seventeen years passed before a second book came, directed this time against the urban middle class of socialist Algeria. A digital reissue has made it accessible again.
Who it is for
A large volume in French, with no tightly knotted plot. It helps to know that it is a childhood reported as it was, and that one moves forward at the pace of the seasons and of learning.
Prizes and reception
Quickly out of print after a lively success, it is ranked by Charles Bonn among the unjustly overlooked novels that quietly carry a sharp critique.