Mohammed Dib

Mohammed Dib was born in the year 1920; he died in the year 2003. He was an Algerian author who wrote over 30 novels and many short stories, poems and literature for children in the French language.

source of picture: en.wikipedia.org

Mohammed Dib is perhaps the most prolific and the most popular writer in the country. The works he did incorporates the breadth of the 20^th century history of the country, Algeria, as his works focused more on the fight for independence in the country.

Life

Mohammed Dib was born in Tlemcen in the western part of the country, near the border with Morocco to a middle class family that had poor background. After losing his father a tender age, Mohammed Dib began to write poetry at the age of 15.  When he was 18, he began to work as a teacher in a school that is in nearby Oujda in Morocco.  In his 20s and 30s, he worked in many capacities as a weaver, a teacher, an accountant, a journalist and an interpreter for the French and British military. At this time, he also studied literature at the University if Algiers. In the year 1952, which was two year before the revolution of the country, Mohammed Dib got married to a French woman, he joined the Algerian Communist Party and visited France, and that was the same year he published his first novel called La Grande Maison. Mohammed Dib was a member of the generation of 52 – a group of writers.

Mohammed Dib was expelled from the country by the French authorities in the year 1959 for his support for the independence of the country and also for the success of his works and novels that portrayed the reality of life in the colonial Algeria for the people of the country. Rather than relocating to Cairo like several other nationalists of the country, Mohammed Dib went to France, and it was there that he gained the full permission to stay after many writers lobbied the government of France. From the year 1967, Mohammed Dib lived in La Celle-Saint-Cloub, which is near Paris.

Mohammed Dib was a teacher at the University of California at Los Angeles from the year 1976 to the year 1977. He was a professor at the Sorbonne, which is in Paris, France.

Awards

Ø  1998 Mallarmé prize

Bibliography

Ø  La grande maison (1952)

Ø  L'incendie (1954)

Ø  Au café (1957)

Ø  Le métier à tisser (1957)

Ø  Baba Fekrane (1959)

Ø  Un Éte africain (1959)

Ø  Ombre gardienne (1961)

Ø  Qui se souvient de la mer (1962)

Ø  Cours sur la rive sauvage (1964)

Ø  Le talisman (1966)

Ø  La danse du roi (1968)

Ø  Formulaires (1970)

Ø  Dieu en barbarie (1970)

Ø  Le Maitre de chasse (1973)

Ø  L'histoire du chat qui boude (1974)

Ø  Omneros (1975)

Ø  Habel (1977)

Ø  Feu beau feu (1979)

Ø  Mille hourras pour une gueuse (1980)

Ø  Les terrasses d'Orsol (1985)

Ø  O vive- poèmes (1987)

Ø  Le sommeil d'Eve (1989)

Ø  Neiges de Marbre (1990)

Ø  Le Désert sans détour (1992)

Ø  L'infante Maure (1994)

Ø  L'arbre à dires (1998)

Ø  L'Enfant-Jazz (1998)

Ø  Le Cœur insulaire (2000)

Ø  The Savage Night (2001) (trans. by C. Dickson)

Ø  Comme un bruit d'abeilles (2001)

Ø  L.A. Trip (2003)

Ø  Simorgh (2003)

Ø  Laezza (2006)