Mohammed Dib (1920–2003)

Mohammed Dib, who emigrated from his native Algeria to southern France in 1959, was born in 1920 at Tlemcen, near the Algerian-Moroccan border. After leaving high school, he worked successively as a primary school teacher, a carpet weaver, and a railway worker until he became a reporter for a small mehr anzeigen local newspaper. It was at this point that he began to develop his literary talents. His first novel, La Grande Maison (1952), the first volume of a trilogy, Algerie, was followed by L'Incindie (1954) and Le Metier a Tisser (1957). This trilogy set the tone for his early writings, which are characterized by their realistic and semi-autobiographical focus on the problems and crises of individual adjustment to a French-dominated Arab social and cultural environment. But, since the 1960s, there has been a tremendous shift in his style and commitments. According to Len Ortzen, the techniques employed by Dib from the late 1960s and early 1970s "are reminiscent of abstract painting. Indeed, Qui Se Souvient de la Mer [first published in 1962 and translated into English as Who Remembers the Sea] was inspired by Picasso's painting Guernica." Among Dib's most dominant themes is the futility of war, a concern grounded in his experience of the Algerian War of Independence, which he handles with passion, humanity, and universality of vision in Le Dance du Roi (1968). (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen