Narrative
Un été de cendres
Not translated into English
Abdelkader Djemaï · 1995
Synopsis
A civil servant of the General Directorate of Statistics fallen into disgrace, the narrator lives in the cubbyhole that serves him as both office and lodging, reduced to a camp bed. Confronted with a blind bureaucracy, he absorbs himself in pointless calculations, while in his heat-stricken city mistrust, suspicion and terror, assaults and repression rise.
Context
The narrative was published by Michalon in 1995, in a volume of a little over a hundred pages, and opens the trilogy the author devoted to the black decade, completed by two books published by the same publisher. A study from the University of Oran shows how the closed space of the cubbyhole, where work and life merge, governs the writing of violence and leads the narrator to delirium. The actress Catherine Hiegel gave a public reading of it, and Gallimard reissued it in paperback in the Folio series.
Who it is for
A short narrative of about a hundred pages, written in French, which assumes a knowledge of the broad outline of the Algerian civil war.
Prizes and reception
Prix Découverte Albert-Camus and Prix Tropiques, awarded to the book in the year of its publication.
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