Narrative
Cristal
Not translated into English
Gilbert Naccache · 1982
Synopsis
Imprisoned for his activity in a left-wing movement opposed to Bourguiba's regime, a militant secretly writes, in pencil, on the paper of cigarette packets, the story of the prisons where he spends nearly ten years: the civil prison of Tunis, then Borj Erroumi, dug into the mountain near Bizerte, the death-row quarter, the privations and the relations between inmates. There he also reflects on memory and writing, on his Jewish origins, on his place as a Tunisian and on his communism.
Context
The book was published in Tunis in 1982 by Éditions Salammbô, in the “Identités” series, in three hundred and twenty-nine pages; the author also ran that publishing house. According to Nawaat, he wrote the text in 1974, with a pencil sharpened on the lid of a sardine tin, and the title takes up, according to Nawaat and Justice Info, the name of the cheap brand on whose paper he wrote. Justice Info sees in it the first testimony of its kind on Tunisian prisons in the sixties and seventies. An Arabic translation appeared in 2019, and a second volume of prison writings had followed in 2005.
Who it is for
A prison testimony in French, readable without prior knowledge of Tunisia in the Bourguiba years.
Prizes and reception
Described as an “undeniable masterpiece” by Webdo's chronicle on the author's death; translated into Arabic nearly forty years later.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.