Novel
Le Muezzin
Not translated into English
Mourad Bourboune · 1968
Synopsis
The Muezzin: Saïd Ramiz, descended from a line of muezzins but who was one only once, out of necessity, is nicknamed the stuttering muezzin. During the war, he belonged in France to a cell of militants and committed several violent acts, before being betrayed, arrested in Marseille and tortured. When independence comes, he returns to Algeria, released from an asylum against his doctor's advice, and everyone fears him: those who may have betrayed him, the religious authorities, who fear that he will blow up a mosque, and the police. His broken narrative mixes memories of childhood and war.
Context
The novel appears with Christian Bourgois in 1968, three years after the overthrow that had driven its author into exile. A fractured narrative in which satire of political and religious power mingles with the hero's delirium, it radicalises the challenge to the new Algeria. Reissued later under the title Le Muezzin bègue, it has been translated only into Danish and remains hard to find for a long time: even the publisher no longer kept a copy when Pierre Joris looked for one for an anthology. Its author then gave up all literary activity.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred pages, in French, a large part of which is made up of the hero's ramblings. It is necessary to know that it assumes familiarity with the clandestine activity of Algerian militants in France.
Prizes and reception
Hailed as an iconoclastic novel and as its author's book of maturity, it has nevertheless remained almost impossible to find.