Dr Tony Shaw

Once again, I'm not too happy with the title in translation of a book: why  To Hell and Back : the life of Samira Bellil ? The origin...

This is Jeanne Benameur's first novel, and is partly autobiographical: it describes the world through the eyes of a young child, like...

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's La Nuit de fer  is a part-autobiographical novel set in the south of Algeria. The title of the book comes fro...

On the cover, the beautiful and photogenic Albertine Sarrazin stares longingly at the viewer, as if she loves him or her. The shot was ta...

Tahar Djaout (1954–93) died at the age of thirty-nine, one of the first victims of Algeria's 'Decade of Terrorism'. Les Cher...

Sorj Chalandon's Profession du père is a staggering work, so powerful that indeed it would scarcely be possible to imagine it as a w...

Jamila Aït-Abbas (1954—2013) only wrote this book, which is her autobiography: it not only involves details of her enforced marriage, ra...

'JAMILA AÏT ABBAS-COROLLER 18/06/1954 – 22/06/2013 ÉCRIVAIN « Marie passe devant... »' Jamila  Aït-Abbas wrote only ...

Simone de Beauvoir was very impressed with Claire Etcherelli's Élise ou la vie vie (her first novel, which scooped the Prix Femina i...

'Samira Bellil 1972 – 2004' Samira Bellil was born in Algiers and died in Paris. She was raped at the age of thirteen and...

In a 2006 MA thesis by Karla Martinez on identity in Nina Bouraoui's Garçon Manqué  and Mes mauvaises pensées , she mentions a numbe...

Azouz Begag's Béni ou le paradis privé (lit. 'Béni or the Private Paradise') is about not fitting in, being alien, but tryi...

In the Francophone world Boualem Sansal has for some time now been well known for his masterly use of language, for his harsh criticisms ...

Rue Darwin is the final book in the six-novel Romans 1999–2011 collection, and although it's tempting I'll be making a pause o...

Le Village de l'Allemand, ou Le journal des frères Schiller is the other novel of Boualem Sansal's which has been translated in...

Harraga, I believe, is one of only two of Boualem Sansal's novels that have been translated into English. Bizarrely, two English-sp...

In my post below on Boualem Sansal's Le Serment des barbares I mentioned his fondness for quoting from books. More than halfway t...

L’enfant fou de l’arbre creux (lit. The Mad Boy in the Hollow Tree ) is set in the present day in the Algerian prison of Lambèse, where...

I suspect that a major reason why Gallimard brought out this collection of all of the six novels that Boualem Sansal published before t...

Azouz Begag's Le Gone du Chaâba is an autobiographical work – or perhaps autofictional is the correct expression, as there is a grea...