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Kateb Yacine
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Kateb Yacine (born Aug. 6, 1929, Constantine , Algeria—died Oct. 28, 1989, Grenoble , France) was an Algerian poet, novelist, and playwright, one of North Africa’s most respected literary figures.
Kateb was educated in French-colonial schools until 1945, when the bloody suppression of a popular uprising at Sétif both ended his education and provided him with material that would figure prominently in his writings. He traveled widely throughout Algeria , Europe, and East Asia , making his living at a variety of occupations.
Kateb’s first novel , Nedjma (1956), is undoubtedly the one work that has most influenced the course of Francophone North African literature . Nedjma recounts a tale of intraclan conflict against the background of violence and disunity characteristic of Algerian society under French colonial rule. It incorporates local legends and popular religious beliefs and treats the quest for a restored Algeria in a mythic manner. The novel, with its discontinuous chronology and several narrative voices, also makes a radical stylistic break with the realistic, straightforward, sequential approach to storytelling on which the North African novel had relied up to that point.
Another novel ( Le Polygone étoilé, 1966; “The Starry Polygon”), a collection of plays ( Le Cercle des représailles, 1959; “The Circle of Reprisals”), and many of his poems take up the same themes and characters as Nedjma. His later plays, however, turned to different concerns. Ho Chi Minh is the hero of Kateb’s L’Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc (1970; “The Man in the Rubber Sandals”). A major theme of his later works is the struggle of the working class against capitalism . His Le poète comme un boxeur: Entretiens 1958–1989 (“The Poet As a Boxer”) was published in 1994. Several of his plays were produced in France and in Algeria, where he led a popular theatre group.
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He was born in Constantine in 1929. Though he had a religious upbringing, he was soon involved in Algerian politics. He became a journalist and travelled around the East before settling in France. Nedjma (Nedjma) was published during Algeria’s war of liberation with France and is probably the most famous Algerian novel. He returned to Algeria in 1963 but continued his travels, including visits to the Soviet Union and Hanoi. He wrote poetry, novels and plays and was director of a theatre company in Algeria. He died of leukemia in 1989.
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Remembering Algerian novelist Kateb Yacine: An eternal captive to his idea of life
Algerian writer Kateb Yacine transformed francophone literature but never saw himself as a novelist. Best known to Arabs for a translation from French, he preferred his plays in the language of the people.
Kateb Yacine is best known in Arab literary history for his masterpiece Nedjma.
The novel was originally published in French in 1956. Since then, multiple Arabic translations have followed without ever capturing the elusive essence of the original. It means his reputation among readers in the Arab world does not fully reflect the depth and range of a challenging and revolutionary writer.
The famous novel brought Yacine international recognition in the late 1950s, but it was merely a brief stop in his creative journey. Yacine never saw himself as a novelist and only wrote two in a career that spanned decades. In his later work, poetry and theatre took centre stage.
Contrary to his reputation in the Arab world, Kateb Yacine is recognised in the West foremost as a poet, playwright, investigative journalist, and skilled political writer.
His poetry – particularly his plays – earned him a global reputation, finding a place among the classics of modern literature. Yacine was hailed among the great writers of the 20th century.
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Kateb Yacine's poetry – particularly his plays – earned him a global reputation, finding a place among the classics of modern literature. Yacine was hailed among the great writers of the 20th century.
A revolutionary novel
The Arab audience is only familiar with a sliver of his works, most notably Nedjma , via translations erroneously believed to resemble the original closely.
The novel revolutionised Francophone storytelling. Its Algerian author left an indelible mark on contemporary French literature, which, for many decades, had looked down on works written in French by non-French people.
However, the Arabic translations never produced an exact parallel of the book. They failed to capture its core and the ideological and philosophical references it included by no fault of the translators. The novel's inherent complexity is impossible to capture.
Critics have agreed that Nedjma is a novel whose depths cannot be replicated, with perhaps even the author unable to explore the multiple layers of interpretation fully.
Dr Saeed Boutagine, the author of the latest and most meticulous translation, described the book as offering various linguistic, lexical, and stylistic possibilities that ultimately prove to be merely theoretical approaches, failing to achieve their intended purpose.
And so the Arab world has much to discover in the works of this great writer.
Nedjma revolutionised Francophone storytelling. Its Algerian author left an indelible mark on contemporary French literature, which, for many decades, had looked down on works written in French by non-French people.
Two reputations
The West's image of Yacine is a more accurate portrayal. It does not reduce his career to a single novel, even though Nedjma was widely acclaimed, nor does it confine him to the label of "novelist," which he had rejected, considering himself primarily a poet and dramatist.
While Nedjma was a significant milestone in Yacine's literary journey and solidified his position in Algerian and Arab literature, his true significance as a writer is that he broke new ground in Francophone literature, whether through poetry, theatre, or novels.
By introducing a new form and writing style, Yacine became the undisputed pioneer of contemporary Algerian literature. It is a title only Mohammed Dib may contest. And no one comes close to Yacine's status as the true innovator of Algerian novels written in French.
No poetry without chaos
Arab readers are not familiar with Yacine's poetry because of a lack of translations. Publishers also failed to get his political and intellectual articles into Arabic, which could have portrayed him in a more positive light.
In the early 1980s, Yacine was frequently portrayed as an irreligious and antagonistic towards Islam. He was dismissed the Arabic language as primitive, accusations that he often ridiculed in his published interviews.
Yacine was a rebellious and revolutionary poet in both his themes and writing methods, unafraid to tackle taboos, particularly political ones. This fearlessness caused him problems, some of which were serious, but that did not stop him from speaking his mind.
He believed that poets stand out not just through the quality of their poetry and the originality of their subjects but also because of their personality. He sought a unique blend of courage, recklessness, and awareness.
In his eyes, poets need not be concerned with knowing and respecting boundaries but rather with what the ideas being pursued in their work demand of them. As long as they continue to believe in the value of poetry, they remain perpetually bound to their ideas.
In a conversation published in the book The Poet as a Boxer, which collects Yacine's interviews from 1959 to 1989, he made this clear to the French theatre director and actor Jean-Marie Ciro:
"Even within the progressive movement, the authentic poet must articulate his dissent and different views. If he fails to do so fully, he will suffocate. His job is to create his own revolution within the political revolution, as he is the perpetual generator of chaos amidst any upheaval."
Yacine had his own poetic dictionary, which he claimed was the result of the inner rebellion found in the mind and heart of any poet who believes in his work and his art form and their refusal to conform to tribal and other imposed norms.
He believed that the poet's tragedy is to be used in the service of a revolutionary struggle, which cannot and should not align with trivial matters. He saw the poet as the pure essence of revolution and life.
In search of identity
Perhaps his instability throughout his life stemmed from his sense of being different and his constant quest to understand his identity as a poet and an Algerian revolutionary.
Despite growing up in a poor family in eastern Algeria to illiterate and apolitical parents, he still sought out opportunities to learn French. Though he became more proficient in the language than most native speakers themselves, he would deliberately speak with an accent to assert his own identity.
His apolitical upbringing did not stop him from joining Algerian groups fighting for independence or taking part in political activities and protests against the French occupation, including the 8 May 1945 demonstrations in the city of Constantine, which claimed the lives of 45,000 people. He was later arrested in Setif and imprisoned for a few months.
That same year, his mother's mental illness caused her to lose touch with reality, robbing him of the woman who had introduced him to poetry in his youth. By the end of that eventful year, he fell in love with Zuleikha, the muse for Nedjma.
Kateb Yacine experienced a life of exile and alienation. He was exiled from Algeria by the French authorities in 1951 and did not return until after the Declaration of Independence. Yet he soon left again due to feeling estranged in his homeland. "I felt as if I had come from Mars," he said.
He then embarked on a new adventure that took him to Russia, Vietnam, Syria, Egypt, and the United States.
While at the peak of his literary success, he made the unexpected decision to return to Algeria for good – and to stop writing in French.
Leaving French behind
Yacine's reasons to stop writing in French differed from those of his compatriot, Malek Haddad, who took the same decision.
Haddad believed that Arabic was more deserving of his genius than French, which he saw as the enemy's language. But he was not fluent in Arabic, and so it amounted to literary suicide. Haddad stopped writing altogether despite being considered the most influential writer of his generation and having a promising creative future.
In contrast, Yacine's decision to drop French was wise and forward-thinking. He remained committed to his eternal love: theatre. In 1970, he returned to Algeria to settle there permanently, informing his publishers that he would no longer write and focus on theatre instead.
Despite his reputation for bohemianism, indifference, and absurdity, Yacine believed that theatre was the most suitable art form for the era and the ideal tool for intellectuals to communicate their ideas to the world.
He considered it more effective than journalism, which he practised professionally, and more capable of reaching both hearts and minds than poetry. As for novels, he viewed them simply as a form of expression which, no matter how widely read, could not compare to the power of theatre so long as it was written in the vernacular.
Yacine believed that theatre was the most suitable art form for the era and the ideal tool for intellectuals to communicate their ideas to the world. He considered it more effective than journalism, which he practised professionally and more capable of reaching both hearts and minds than poetry.
Theatre as the voice of people
Yacine was convinced that popular theatre should be the voice of the people. To that end, it needed to be written in their own, familiar language. To write a play in Standard Arabic or French was futile in his eyes.
And so, he embarked on a theatrical journey that lasted nearly two decades until his death. His most famous play, Muhammad, Pack Your Bag defined Algerian theatre. It was translated into French and later into Standard Arabic by Said Boutagine.
Unfortunately, unlike many of his other plays, including The Betrayed Palestine and The Man in the Rubber Sandals , it was not published.
Yacine immersed himself in theatre, refusing any temptations to return to other forms of writing. He often scoffed at the suggestion that writing is synonymous with publishing works.
In one of his final interviews, when asked why he no longer wrote, he responded with irritation: "No one knows what happens between me and my typewriter. No one has the right to say that I do not write. I am still writing. If you entered my room, you would find thousands of papers scattered all over."
"The world knew me as a writer who wrote and published books in French, but after my return to Algeria, I wanted to work in the vernacular theatre, which also requires writing."
"The difference is I did not publish what I wrote. But I've written Muhammad, Pack Your Bag, The Thousand Year War, and Intelligence Powder. But instead of being published, these works were instead performed on stage and touched millions of spectators, most of whom could neither read nor write."
"I write these plays for myself, but they were performed on stage for them, for the illiterate audience and in their language. That is why I did not feel the need to publish any work during these years."
Yacine spent his days as a captive to his idea of life, which he thought could only be defined by chaos and could only come together through fragmentation.
It seemed as if he was living out Nedjma in a cycle of incomplete events, a reality he had written with the intention of erasing it.
Whatever else, he could not erase the impact he had on this world.
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vernacular Arabic. Still quite young, Kateb Yacine became involved in the anticolonial struggle. At the age of 16, he participated in the Algerian independence demonstrations of 8 May 1945, which led to the killing of an estimated 6,000-13,000 Algerians. Tormented by his memories, Kateb spent eight years in writing (1956), the first Maghribi novel to be instantly recognized as a classic. It has since acquired the status of national revolutionary novel. by A�cha Kassoul and Mohamed-Lakdar Maougal, translated by Philip Beitchman, 2006)
Kateb Yacine was born in Cond�-Smendou, near Constantine, into an old, highly literate family. His father was Kateb Mohamed, an attorney-at-law, and mother Kateb Jasmina. (Kateb is the writer's last name, Yacine his first.) He was raised on tales of Arab achievement as well as on the legends of the Algerian heroes. After attending a Qur'anic school in S�drata, Kateb entered the French education system. His studies at the Coll�ge de S�tif were interrupted in 1945 by his arrest, following his participation in a nationalist demonstration in Setif. "I felt the strenght of ideas... / I found Algeria full of Anger," he wrote in by Moussa (Youcef) Selmane, 1989, p. 39) The demonstration had turned to rioting and massacre of thousands people by the police and the army. Kateb, aged sixteen at the time, was imprisoned without trial, tortured by police, and freed a few months later. While in prison, Kateb discovered his two great loves, revolution and the poetry. One of Kateb's best-known poems, 'La rose de Blida' (1963), was about his mother, who, believing him to have been killed during the demonstration, suffered a mental breakdown. At the age of seventeen, Kateb published his first book, (1946), a collection of poems. Like many of Algerian writers – Mouloud Feraoun, Assia Djebar, Tahar Djaout – he wrote in French instead of using Algerian Arabic, but he argued that all Algerians should be quadrilingual, learning Berber, Arabic, French, and "above all Chinese". by Richard Serrano, 2007, p. 84) From 1947 Kateb began to visit regularly France until he settled there permanently. Katen earned his living as a construction worker, migrant field hand, and took many other jobs. In 1948 Kateb published a long poem, 'Nedjma; ou, le po�me ou le couteau' (Nedjma: or, the poem or the knife) in which the character of Nedjma, a mysterious woman, appeared for the first time. Nedjma also is the name of his cousin, whom the author loved but could not properly court, because she was already married. From 1949 to 1951 Kateb worked as a journalist, principally for the Communist newspaper , where was his fellow journalist. He travelled through Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Soviet Central Asia. For a time he was a dockworker, but from 1952 he devoted himself entirely to writing. "At that time, Camus ruled the roost," Kateb recalled. "Algerian writers hardly existed all, until Mohamed Dib published his first book with Editions du Seuil." by Seth Graebner, 2007, p. 253) Due to his involvement in the Algerian nationalist struggle for independence Kateb's apartment was searched by the police. Under pressure, he was forced to leave France. Kateb's open polemics on Algeria with lasted almost fifteen years. Kateb argued that, if Camus is a great writer, "his books about Algeria sound a false and hollow note". L’Etranger: Fifty Years On, edited by Adele King, 1992, p. 96) At the heart of the debate was the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the question its terror tactics. As a result of his break with Communism, Camus condemned the use of terrorism, "which is execized blindly, in the streets of Algiers for example", and defended French colonial rule. Recalling his experiendes in S�tif, Kateb said that his nationalism took definitive form in those months when thousands of Muslims were butchered. "I have never forgotten." by Haley C. Brown, Honors Theses, 2018, p. 48) However, Kateb was accused in his own country by hard-liners of playing into the colonists' hands for writing in French. Kateb's most famous work, (1957), treats the quest for a restored Algeria in a mythic manner. Its modernist technique, use of multiple narrative voices and discontinuous chronology, has influenced Francophone North African literature and writers elsewhere in the Third World. Kateb himself has admitted that was the most important influence on his style of writing. And like Faulkner with his Yoknapatawpha County, Kateb had his own "little postage stamp of native soil", the eastern part of Algeria. which incorporates local legends and popular religious beliefs, is set in B�ne, Algeria. Owing to the fragmented style, the plot is difficult to follow. Nedjma, a name meaning "star" in Arabic, is a beautiful, married woman, the u fortunate wife of Kemal. Her mother, a Frenchwoman, was kidnapped and raped by four Arab men. Nedjma is loved Rachid, Lakhdar, Mourad, and Mustapha. One of them was Rachid's father Nedjma could be Rachid's sister. Nedjma never changes, but the other characters pass through all the ages of life. Noteworthy, as a character she participates in the action much less than one would expect. Direct quotations of her speech and thought totals less than two pages. Nedjma is portrayed in an ethereal way; she is the quest for Algeria. Critical attention has concentrated on the novel's unusual structure. The action is not chronological the narration has similarities with the arabesques and geometric forms of Islamic art. On of the novel's central events is the 8 May 1945 demonstrations in S�tif. It has been often said that Nedjma is Algeria, or represents national identity. And in addition, produced by the Revolution, she is a "star of blood". Kateb took up the themes of and figure Nedjma in many poems and plays; this female character was throughout his life the focus of his creative vision. His first play was (prod. 1958, The encircled corpse), a drama of colonization and alienation filled with surrealist images. In the mythical expression of the Algerian tragedy, Nedjma represented all the values of Arabic civilization trampled upon by history. (1966), Kateb's second major prose work, introduced several characters from Nedjma. As the author himself explained, everything he has done constitutes "a long single work, always in gestation." Inspired by Aeschylus, Rimbaud, and Brecht, whom he met in Paris, Kateb decided to break away from lyrical tradition and create a more political theatre. Among Kateb's later works is the play (1970, The man in rubber sandals). Its first scenes he had sketched out in 1949, while working as a journalist in Algiers and years before the French defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which Kateb once characterized as "both October and Stalingrad: a revolution of global proportion and an irresistible call to the wretched of the Earth." The Vietnamise hero is Ho Chi Minh. In small roles are such characters as , Chiang Kai-shek, Pierre Loti, and Marie-Antoinette. A series of vignettes highlights the military history of Vietnam and the plight of the transient Algerian labor force in Europe. Characters are presented face to face, the French opposite the Vietnamese, the Viet-Cong opposite the Americans. Brief sequences and spoken chorus alternate. The trial of an American Everyman, called Captain Supermac, occupies the last third of the play. Kateb had visited Vietnam during the war in 1967, when American troops fought with the South Vietnamese and bombed targets in the north. The play was simultaneously produced in Algiers and Lyon. The open warfare against French rule ended in 1962 when Algerians, voting in a national referendum, approved independence and France recognized Algeria's sovereignty. Since the early 1970s, Kateb lived in his native country. He no longer wrote in French; he also put on unpublished plays in colloquial Algerian Arabic. Several of his dramatic works were produced in France and Algeria, where he led a revolutionary theatre group composed of students and workers, (Workers' Cultural Action or ACT). At the beginning, the members were badly paid or received no pay for their work, but were compensated with some cereal and provisions given by the audience. Later the company toured in France and had a great success among the audiences. Kateb's (1971, Mohammed, take your suitcase), dealing with Algerian immigration, was performed in factories and other industries, and reached 70000 people in five months. Kateb brought the play to stage with no experience of directing. In this work Kateb wanted to show the class complicity that exists between the French bourgeoisie and the Algerian bourgeoisie. He had remarked that the revolutionary writer "must transmit a living message, placing the public at the heart of a theater that partakes of the neverending combat opposing the proletariat to the bourgeoisie." Kateb died on October 28, 1989, in Grenoble, France. La Kahina (1985) featured the legendary Berber queen, also known as Dihya, who fought against the Arab invaders in the seventh century CE. She is one of Kateb's female characters who has been linked to Nedjma and free, Berber Algeria, the opposite of the Arabo-Islamic myth of an Arab Algeria. At the time of his death, Kateb was revising the first version of ot the play (Robespierre the sansculotte, or the ghost of Parc Monceau), commissioned for the bicentennial of the French revolution. It was first performed at the Avignon festival in 1988. With a few exceptions, Kateb's works are unavailable in English. Richard Howard's translation of Nedjma came out in 1961, and the Ubu Repertory Theater series of New York published in 1985 Stephen J. Vogel's translation of (La poudre d'intelligence). by Iziar De Miguel (2023); Kateb Yacine et Debza: au cœur du Printemps berbère by Farida Aït Ferroukh; préface de Mourad Yelles (2022); Representing Algerian Women: Kateb, Dib, Feraoun, Mammeri, Djebar by Edward John Still (2019); by Neil Doshi (2009); 'Kateb Yacine and the Ruins of the Present,' in History's Place: Nostalgia and the City in French Algerian Literature by Seth Graebner (2007); Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb by Jarrod Hayes (2000); , edited by Kamal Salhi (1998); : Northern African novel. The genre is comparatively new to the Arab world. Algerians form the largest group of Maghribis writing in French. Moroccan postmodernist novelists, writing in Arabic, have paved way for experimental fiction. : Kateb Yacine's birtdate in some sources: August 26, 1929.: |
Kateb Yacine: A Profile from the Archives
[ ”A Profile from the Archives“ is a series published by Jadaliyya in both Arabic and English in cooperation with the Lebanese newspaper, Assafir . These profiles will feature iconic figures who left indelible marks in the politics and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. This profile was originally published in Arabic and was translated by Mazen Hakeem.]
Name: Kateb
Last Name: Yacine
Date of Birth: 1929
Date of Death: 1989
Place of Birth: Smondo - Constantine
Wife’s Name: Zobaida Sharghi
Category: Writer
Profession: Playwright, novelist, and poet
Kateb Yacine
- Algerian national.
- Born in a town called Smondo near Constantine on 6 August 1929.
- His birth name is Yacine and his last name is Kateb. He decided to flip them around and thus he came to be known as Kateb Yacine.
- His father was a lawyer.
- Married Zobaida Sharghi; he named his eldest son Amazeigh.
- Started writing poetry when he was eight years old.
- Went to a Qu`ran school for a short time before he started going to the French School in Setif where he was introduced to Nerval, Baudelaire, and Verlaine.
- Participated in Setif protests on 8 May 1945 against the French occupation before his sixteenth birthday. He was arrested in the demonstrations, detained at the central prison, and expelled from school.
- After his release from prison, he roamed in Algeria and its desert and wrote poetry. His first collection of poems Soliloquy, monajat , was published in 1946.
- Joined the Algerian Communist Party in 1947 and went on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1951.
- Left Algeria for France and between 1948 and 1951, he worked as a correspondent for Alger Républicain (Algeria Republican) newspaper, which was established by the French writer Albert Camus.
[An interview in French, translated into English, in which Kateb Yacine criticizes the French writer Albert Camus and contrasts him with William Faulkner.]
- Travelled to Europe in 1955 and met Bertolt Brecht. Left France for Italy and lived there for a period of time.
- He visited Vietnam twice, once in 1967 and then in 1970.
- Wrote novels, plays, and poems against the French occupation of Algeria and in defense of his nation’s cause. His most famous play was "The Enclosed Corpse" ( Le Cadavre encerclé ) which caused a stir in French cultural circles when it was released. He also published the novel A Star, Nedjma . Both novels alluded to Algeria and its suffering.
- Went back to Algeria in 1970 and stopped writing in French and started writing in vernacular Algerian. He established a theater group that performed his plays on stages in Algerian cities and European capitals. He used to say: “Just as I rebelled against the French Algeria, I rebel against the Arab Muslim Algeria. I am not Arab or Muslim. I am Algerian.”
- Awarded many literary awards including: Jean Amroush Award in Florence in 1963, the Lotus Award in 1975, and the Grand National Award for Literature in Paris.
- Died on 28 October 1989 at the age of sixty in Grenoble due to leukemia.
Publications:
- A Poet is Like a Boxer, (Le Poète comme un boxeur), (journalistic interviews) 1944
- Abdelkader and the Algerian Independance, Abdelkader et l`indépendance algérienne , 1948
- Nedjma, Nedjma, 1956.
- The Starry Polygon, Le Polygone étoilé , 1966.
- Soliloquy, Soliloques , 1946.
- Poems for the Oppressed Algeria, qasa’id ila al-jaza’ir al-modhtahada , 1948.
- One Hundred Thousand Virgins, mi’et alf a’thraa , 1958.
- Under the Cries of the Rooster, tahta sarkhat al-deekah , 1956.
- The Circle of Reprisal, Le Cercle des représailles , 1959
- The Enclosed Corpse, Le Cadavre encerclé , 1955.
- The Intelligence Powder, La Poudre d`intelligence , 1959.
- The Ancestors are Double The Ferocity, Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité , 1959.
- The Man with the Rubber Sandals, L`Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc , 1970.
- The Savage Woman, al-mar’a al-motawahisha , 1963.
- Muhammad: Carry Your Bag, Mohammed prends ta valise , 1971.
- The Butchery of Hope, Boucherie de l`espérance, 1971.
- Oanisa, 1972.
- Because It`s a Woman . Parce que c`est une femme , 1972
- The Two Thousand Year War, harb al-alfai sana , 1974.
- King of the West, malek al-gharb , 1977.
- Women’s Voice, sawt al-nisaa’ .
- The Deceived Palestine, falesteen al-makhdoo’
- Moses the Sweeper, mosa al-kannas .
- Nuggets of Creativity, shatharat ibdaa’ , 1986.
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Kateb Yacine (born Aug. 6, 1929, Constantine, Algeria—died Oct. 28, 1989, Grenoble, France) was an Algerian poet, novelist, and playwright, one of North Africa's most respected literary figures. Kateb was educated in French-colonial schools until 1945, when the bloody suppression of a popular uprising at Sétif both ended his education and ...
the Grand Prix National des Lettres in France, 1987. Children. Amazigh Kateb. Signature. Kateb Yacine (Arabic pronunciation: [kæːtb jæːsiːn]; 2 August 1929 or 6 August 1929 - 28 October 1989) was an Algerian writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian Arabic, and his advocacy of the Berber cause.
Biography. He was born in Constantine in 1929. Though he had a religious upbringing, he was soon involved in Algerian politics. ... Kateb Yacine (in French)Kateb Yacine : sa vie, son oeuvre (in French) Kateb Yacine, le poète errant (1929-1989) (in French) Bibliography. 1946 Soliloques (poetry) 1948 Abdelkader et l'indépendance algerienne ...
Best known to the Arab world for a novel translated from French, Algerian visionary playwright Kateb Yacine (seen here in 1961) thought that true poetry came from chaos. Samir Qasimi. last update on 11 Dec 2023. Kateb Yacine is best known in Arab literary history for his masterpiece Nedjma. The novel was originally published in French in 1956.
Kateb Yacine (kä´tāb yä´sēn), 1929-89, Algerian author. In 1945 he moved to Paris and afterward traveled in Europe and Asia. His most famous work is the novel Nedjma (1957, tr. 1961, new tr. 1991), a symbolic story of the love of four men for one woman. The work is notable for its carefully constructed, multilevel plot. Source for information on Yacine, Kateb: The Columbia Encyclopedia ...
Yacine is one of the most notable French Algerian writers. Nedjma, a long prose poem reminiscent of Faulkner in the handling of time, has been called by Georges J. Joyaux "undoubtedly the best testimonial to the birth of a new Algeria." Yacine once said: "Nedjma [the girl in the story] is the soul of Algeria, torn apart since its origin and ...
Kateb Yacine (1929-1989) Algerian novelist, poet, and playwright, who wrote in French until the beginning of the 1970s, when he began to use in his théâtre de combat vernacular Arabic. Still quite young, Kateb Yacine became involved in the anticolonial struggle. At the age of 16, he participated in the Algerian independence demonstrations of ...
Kateb Yacine Algerian national. ... Went to a Qu`ran school for a short time before he started going to the French School in Setif where he was introduced to Nerval, Baudelaire, and Verlaine. Participated in Setif protests on 8 May 1945 against the French occupation before his sixteenth birthday. He was arrested in the demonstrations, detained ...
Kateb Yacine was no ordinary writer; he was a literary provocateur, a fearless voice unafraid to challenge convention and confront societal norms. His iconic works, such as "Nedjma" (1956) and ...
Kateb Yacine, the first among them to come upon the literary scene as a two-fold rebel, rejecting in dramatic fashion not only colonial domina tion but its accepted literary tradition. Kateb Yacine, whose surname "kateb" means writer in Arabic,2 is a poet, dramatist, and journalist, as well as a novelist. As Edouard Glissant remarked in his ...
Kateb Yacine ( (2 August 1929 or 6 August 1929 - 28 October 1989) was an Algerian Amazigh writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian dialect, and his advocacy of the Berber cause.. Biography. Kateb Yacine was officially born on 6 August 1929 in Constantine, though it is likely that his birth occurred four days earlier.Although his birth name is Yacine Kateb, he once ...
Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Kateb Yacine has received more than 296,805 page views. His biography is available in 28 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 27 in 2019). Kateb Yacine is the 1,709th most popular writer (down from 1,667th in 2019), the 54th most popular biography from Algeria (down from 50th in 2019) and the 8th ...
See Full PDF. Download PDF. Kateb Yacine. Soliloquies and other poems (Laouari Boukhalfa and Garratón Mateu, Carmen eds.) Kateb Yacine: a revolutionary inside the revolution. 2022 •. Carmen Garraton. Kateb Yacine is considered to be one of the pillars of Algerian literature. In 2018, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Kateb Yacine ...
Kateb Yacine, a leading Algerian novelist, poet and playwright, died of leukemia on Saturday in Grenoble, France. He was 60 years old. Mr. Yacine died at La Tranche Hospital, where he had gone for ...
Kateb Yacine is a central reference in Algerian and North African Literature, particularly famous for his avant-garde novel Nedjma (1956). Yacine was born in 1926 in Constantine, in Eastern Algeria, into a family of poets and lawyers. He went to the traditional koranic school for a short time then was educated in the French colonial school. 8 ...
Kateb grew up in an Arabic-speaking household, and as a young child, he attended Qurʾanic schools. Following his father's decision, however, he was transferred at a young age into French-medium institutions.
found: Wikipedia, June 3, 2013 (Kateb Yacine (August 2, 1929 or August 6, 1929-October 28, 1989) was an Algerian writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian Arabic dialect; officially born on August 6, 1929 in Constantine, though it is likely that his birth occurred four days earlier. Although his birth name is Yacine Kateb, he once said that he was so used to hearing ...
Kateb Yacine. Writer: Poussière de Juillet. Kateb Yacine was born on 6 August 1929 in Constantine, French Algeria, now Algeria. He was a writer, known for Poussière de Juillet (1967), Nedjma (1963) and Déjà le sang de mai ensemençait novembre (1982). He died on 28 October 1989 in Grenoble, Isère, France.
Amir Aziz examines L'Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc (The Man in Rubber Sandals), a 1970 play by the Franco-Algerian writer Kateb Yacine. L'Homme narrates the dramatic journeys of characters of disparate geopolitical and historical contexts, such as Mohamed, a North African peasant conscripted into the French colonial army, and Alabama, an African-American soldier serving in the Vietnam War.
Nedjma. by. Kateb Yacine, Richard Howard (Translator) 3.53 avg rating — 641 ratings — published 1956 — 31 editions. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read. Currently Reading. Read.
Follow Kateb Yacine and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com's Kateb Yacine Author Page.
Kateb Yacine - Biography. Biography. Kateb Yacine was officially born on August 6, 1929, but it is more likely that his birth occurred four days earlier. He was born in Guelma. Born as Yacine Kateb, he once said that he was so used to hearing his teachers calling out names with the last name first that he adopted Kateb Yacine as his pen name ...
Kateb Yacine BiographyKateb Yacine was an Franco-Algerian writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian Arabic Wiki-en.org Home; News ... Kateb Yacine biography, Life and Career, Death, photo and Books. by Isaac Chotiner. April 16, 2023. in Wiki. Advertisement.