Novel · A way to begin
The Poor Man's Son
Le Fils du pauvre
Mouloud Feraoun · 1950
Synopsis
In a village of two thousand souls in High Kabylia, where the men live on meagre harvests and often leave to work in France, Fouroulou Menrad grows up in a destitute family, doted on by the women of the household. At the village school, he holds on; a scholarship takes him to the secondary course, then to the teacher training school in Algiers, while his family counts on him and the world war descends on the country. The book presents itself as the notebook of a Kabyle schoolteacher.
Context
Begun during the Easter holidays of 1939 and finished in 1948, the manuscript was copied out by hand three times. After an unsuccessful attempt in Paris, it appeared at the author's expense in 1950, in a thousand copies, from a publisher in Le Puy who had it printed in Rodez, under the full title “Menrad, instituteur kabyle”. Le Seuil took it up in 1954, with the support of Emmanuel Roblès, in a version a third shorter: the chapters on the teacher-training college and the war, and the epilogue, had disappeared. The author's foundation published in 2023 an edition restoring the original text.
Who it is for
A short novel, easy to read, in French. Note that the current edition, from 1954, is one third shorter than the original.
Prizes and reception
Grand Literary Prize of the city of Algiers in December 1950; the most famous of its author's novels, translated into English in 2005.