Novel
Jacinthe noire
Not translated into English
Taos Amrouche · 1947
Synopsis
Marie-Thérèse, known as Maïté, a young woman from the Limousin, recounts her years in a austere boarding school for girls in Paris and the arrival of Reine, who has come from Tunisia. Exuberant and strong-willed, Reine clashes with the headmistress and the devout boarders. Though she comes from a family that changed religion, she says she is hardly different from her grandmother, who remained Muslim. Soon the school divides between those who want to exclude her and those who defend her.
Context
The novel appeared in 1947 with Charlot, in Paris. It transposes an episode from the author's life, a study stay in Paris in 1934 that lasted only about two months, and entrusts the portrait of the heroine to another boarder. Little noticed when it appeared, it was reissued by Maspero in 1972, then by Joëlle Losfeld in 1996, with a letter from André Gide; it was after this last edition that university criticism took an interest in it.
Who it is for
An intimist novel, in French, of about two hundred and sixty pages, in which religion draws the dividing line between the boarders.
Prizes and reception
The first novel published by an Algerian woman in French, and one of the very first by a woman author from North Africa.
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