Maghreb

Overview

Arabic, Berber and French have shared the page for a century, and the choice of language commits more than convenience: the generation of 1952, with Feraoun's The Poor Man's Son, Mammeri's The Forgotten Hill and Chraibi's The Simple Past, wrote in French in countries still colonised, while the Arabic-language novel developed mainly after independence, from Messadi's The Dam to al-Koni's Gold Dust. Cinema was born here before independence, with the Tunisian Albert Samama Chikly in 1922, and the Ouarzazate studios have hosted shoots from all over the world since the sixties.

What circulates

Texts circulate through three channels that do not overlap: French publishing, where many authors still appear today; the Arabic publishing of Cairo and Beirut, which reaches the whole Arab world; and Berber collections, often academic and in small print runs. An author may be read in Paris and unknown in Rabat, or the reverse.

Limits of this grouping

The word means the west in Arabic, the sunset side of the Arab world, and that vantage point is not geographical: Mauritania is also attached to West Africa, Libya leans towards the Mashriq. The Sahara, which the map gives as a border, was long a road: the manuscripts of Timbuktu came out of those exchanges.

Works cited

• NovelThe Poor Man's SonLe Fils du pauvreMouloud Feraoun · 1950A Kabyle childhood in colonial Algeria, and school as the only way out of poverty.Literature
• NovelLa Colline oubliéeMouloud Mammeri · 1952not translated into EnglishA mountain Kabyle community in 1939, when the war shakes an ancient world and its youth.Literature
• NovelThe Simple PastLe Passé simpleDriss Chraïbi · 1954A son rises up against a devout and all-powerful father, in a Morocco about to become independent.Literature
• TheatreThe DamالسدMahmoud Messadi · 1955A valley without water, outside time and outside any country, where a local deity rules over men who have stopped waiting.Literature
• NovelGold DustالتبرIbrahim al-Koni · 1990A Tuareg and his spotted mehari, in a Sahara where gold corrupts what beauty had made sacred.Literature
• CinemaZohraAlbert Samama Chikly · 1922Protectorate Tunisia in 1922, where a pioneer of the image shoots with his daughter a first local fiction film.Cinema