Novel
La Colline oubliée
Not translated into English
Mouloud Mammeri · 1952
Synopsis
The Forgotten Hill: in the spring of 1939, Mokrane, a student, comes back to spend the summer at Tasga, a village in high Kabylia. With his friends from Taasast, the house where their group meets, Menach, Idir, Mouh ou Ouali, he lives through the evening gatherings, the rivalries and the love affairs; Menach pines for Davda, a married woman, and Mokrane marries Aazi. Then the war mobilises the young men, typhus, famine and the black market fall upon the village, and Mokrane's mother turns against her daughter-in-law, who gives her no child.
Context
The novel was published in Paris by Plon in 1952. It was shortlisted for the major Paris prizes of the autumn and ended up crowned in Algiers, but part of the Algerian nationalist movement attacked it fiercely, reproaching it for depicting only Kabylia and for serving the division of the country. The village of Tasga is fictional, but the author, born in Taourirt, “the hill”, put a great deal of himself into it. The book was brought to the screen by Abderrahmane Bouguermouh, who had committed himself to this with the author.
Who it is for
A novel in French, with no English translation. It helps to know that it is narrated by an educated young man who looks at his village from the inside.
Prizes and reception
Prix des Quatre Jurys; the author's first novel, translated into Russian and German and adapted for the cinema.