Novel
Au commencement était la mer
Not translated into English
Maïssa Bey · 1996
Synopsis
In the Algiers of the nineties, one summer by the sea, Nadia, eighteen, a law student, meets Karim on the beach and lives with him a love she must hide. Around her are a silent mother, a little sister, Feriel, and an elder brother, Djamel, who frequents the mosque, slides into fundamentalism and turns authoritarian, while the terrorist threat hangs over the city and the sea remains her only space of freedom.
Context
The author's first novel, the book came out in Algiers in 1996 from Éditions Marsa, in the midst of the civil war, then from L'Aube and, in 2012, from Barzakh. Violence is everywhere in it, death stands "at the end of the housing estate", and the narrative also summons the memory of the war of independence and the colonial conquest. Critics read in it the power of words against weapons, in the light of the assassination of the writer Tahar Djaout. It has not been translated into English.
Who it is for
For living from within Algeria's years of terror through the eyes of a young woman who dreams of being free.
Prizes and reception
Imene Hazourli and Samira Souilah read in it a women's writing of history and liken Nadia to the figure of Antigone.