Novel
Shattered Vision
Regard blessé
Rabah Belamri · 1987
Synopsis
In 1962, in a village near Sétif, as Algeria gains independence, Hassan, a teenager, begins to lose his sight following a detached retina. His mother turns to marabouts and healers, whose traditional remedies follow one after another. At the same time the boy lives through the progress of his affliction and the upheavals of a country passing from the violence of war to the euphoria of independence.
Context
Gallimard published this novel in 1987. The author returns in it to the adolescence during which he lost his sight, in his native region, during the last months of the war; the autobiographical narrative combines the hero's loss of sight with the disillusionments that follow independence. The book was reissued in Folio in 2002, and Hugh A. Harter translated it into English for Holmes & Meier in 1995.
Who it is for
An autobiographical novel of about two hundred pages, in French, in which a teenager's blindness mingles with the history of his country.
Prizes and reception
France Culture Prize in 1987; published in English under the title Shattered Vision, it remains available in paperback from Folio.
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