Reading Maïssa Bey
Maïssa Bey presented her novel Madame Lafrance (Sujet Verlag Bremen, 2017) at the Literaturhaus Villa Augustin in Dresden on September 14, 2017 at 7 pm. It was the opening event of a reading tour by the author in Germany.
Maïssa Bey is one of Algeria's most renowned French-language authors. In her novels, stories and plays, she reflects on the tense present and history of her country and the Maghreb between tradition and modernity, the colonial era and the post-colonial era.
She was born near Algiers in 1950, studied French and worked as a teacher. She began writing under the influence of the bloody civil war that engulfed her country during the so-called Black Decade (1992-2002). Maïssa Bey, who describes herself as "Arab by birth, culture and language. And Muslim. Deeply influenced by Muslim culture and tradition", she chooses literature as a form of expression in order to be more than a "silent, passive witness in the face of her violent and challenging contemporary history". She makes us realize that this history crosses the supposed border of the Mediterranean between North Africa and Europe, in both directions, in the past, the present and the future.
Madame Lafrance is a poetic historical narrative in which Maïssa Bey observes 132 years of French colonial rule in Algeria through the narrative voice of a nameless child. In 25 images, the author traces the main stages, from the landing of the French Armada in 1830 and the resistance led by Emir Abdel Kader to the bloody war of liberation, the rampage of the terrorist organization OAS and the proclamation of independence in 1962, which was accompanied by the flight of almost all Algerian French. It took two years to prepare this linguistically complex text. The author weaves factual reports, newspaper articles, diaries and letters from contemporary authors into the child's perspective, creating a text that oscillates between fact and fiction.
"Maïssa Bey's story proves to be above all a literary work written in a prose vibrating with poetry." Pierre Daum, Libération
The event was a cooperation between the Institute of Romance Studies at TUD Dresden University of Technology, the Literaturhaus Villa Augustin Dresden, Sujet Verlag Bremen and the Institut Français Sachsen.
Photo impressions of the event:
