Leïla Sebbar's novel recounts an event in French history that has been hidden for many years. Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organized a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. About 30,000 Algerians gathered peacefully, but the protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. Between 50 and 200 Algerians were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. This incident provides the background for a more intimate look into the history of violence between France and Algeria. Following three young protagonists--one French, one Algerian, and one French national of Algerian descent--Sebbar takes readers on a journey of discovery and comprehension. Mildred Mortimer's impressive translation conveys the power of Sebbar's words in English and allows English-speaking readers an opportunity to understand the complex relationship between past and present, metropole and colony, immigrant and citizen, that lies at the heart of this acclaimed novel.

The celebrated and highly versatile writer Leïla Sebbar was born in French colonial Algeria but has lived nearly her entire adult life in France, where she is recognized as a major voice on the penetrating effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The dramatic contrast between her past and present is the subject of the nine autobiographical essays collected in this volume. Written between 1978 and 2006, they trace a journey that began in Aflou, Algeria, where her father ran a schoolhouse, and continued to France, where Sebbar traveled, alone, as a graduate student before eventually realizing her powerful creative vision.

The pieces collected in this book capture an array of experiences, sensations, and sentiments surrounding the French colonial presence in Algeria and offer an intimate and prismatic reflection on Sebbar's bicultural upbringing as the child of an Algerian father and French mother. Sebbar paints an unflinching portrait of her original disconnection from her father's Arabic language and culture, depicting her struggle to revive a cultural heritage that her family had deliberately obscured and to convey the vibrant yet muted Arabic of her father and of Algeria. Looking back from numerous vantage points throughout her life, she presents the complicated and divisive dynamics of being raised between two shores--the colonized and the colonizer.

CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

Silence on the Shores depicts the final day in the life of a Maghrebian immigrant in France. Having crossed the Mediterranean to the other shore as a young man to find work, he ultimately remained in France, married a French woman, and broke the promise he made to his mother to return home one day. Aware that death is drawing close, he fears experiencing the ultimate form of exile: dying alone, with no fellow Muslim at his side to whisper the customary prayer for the dead in his ear.

Leïla Sebbar's minimalist style deftly and powerfully conveys the simplicity of everyday life on both shores of the Mediterranean. Interweaving several monologues, she examines multiple facets of exile and the role of memory in easing its pain.

The celebrated and highly versatile writer Leïla Sebbar was born in French colonial Algeria but has lived nearly her entire adult life in France, where she is recognized as a major voice on the penetrating effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The dramatic contrast between her past and present is the subject of the nine autobiographical essays collected in this volume. Written between 1978 and 2006, they trace a journey that began in Aflou, Algeria, where her father ran a schoolhouse, and continued to France, where Sebbar traveled, alone, as a graduate student before eventually realizing her powerful creative vision.

The pieces collected in this book capture an array of experiences, sensations, and sentiments surrounding the French colonial presence in Algeria and offer an intimate and prismatic reflection on Sebbar's bicultural upbringing as the child of an Algerian father and French mother. Sebbar paints an unflinching portrait of her original disconnection from her father's Arabic language and culture, depicting her struggle to revive a cultural heritage that her family had deliberately obscured and to convey the vibrant yet muted Arabic of her father and of Algeria. Looking back from numerous vantage points throughout her life, she presents the complicated and divisive dynamics of being raised between two shores--the colonized and the colonizer.

CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French