The Barbary Figs - Couverture souple

Boudjedra, Rashid

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1906697426 ISBN 13 : 9781906697426

Editeur : Arabia Books Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

Two old friends find themselves side by side on the flight from Algiers to Constantine. There is a lot of history between them, as well as bad blood. They have lived very different lives, even though they are bound by shared experiences, chief among them the Algerian War of Independence. The flight will last only an hour - an hour during which both their stories will be told, interspersed and peppered by anecdotes about Algeria s struggle to release itself from the French colonial grip, something that, as the narrator points out, did not last only between 1954-1962, but has in fact been waged since 1830. Rachid, the narrator, has always both admired and resented Omar, his cousin - who has become an architect, studied in Chicago, and led a very successful life. Though successful, Omar has always been on the run from the ghosts of his earlier life, ghosts that Rachid has now set himself the task of exorcising. The title, The Barbary Figs is a symbol of the old Algeria since the two men s grandfather was once a landowner and used to grow them on his estate. The new Algeria is far less straightforward, and has produced far more bitter fruit. Rachid s father was suspected of collaborating with the French authorities, and his brother Salim worked for the OAS, or the Organisation de l armée secrète , the farright military group that attempted to thwart Algeria s plans for self-determination.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Rashid Boudjedra was born in Ain Beida, Algeria, in 1941. He interrupted his studies in the late 1950s to join the resistance to French rule and after being wounded, was sent first to Eastern Europe and then to Spain as a representative of the National Liberation Front. After a string of highly successful novels during the 1980s and early 1990s, which saw him compared to Faulkner and Garcia Marquez, Boudjedra decided to stop writing in French in favour of Arabic.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Arabia Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2012
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1906697426
• ISBN 13: 9781906697426
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 160
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible