Throughout their lives, the three authors represented in this mini-feature—Rashid Boudjedra (b. 1941), Matoub Lounès (1956–1998), and Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011)—never shied away from controversies and as a result paid a dear price for their politics: Bouanani’s oeuvre has been largely forgotten, Lounès was murdered by extremists, while Boudjedra has spent much of his life either in exile or under police protection. From Lounès’s biting political songs to Bouanani’s surrealist poems and Boudjedra’s hallucinatory novels, these artists dedicated their immense talents to fighting against the twin legacies that arguably played the largest part in shaping the North African countries of Algeria and Morocco over the past century: French colonialism and Saudi-sponsored Islamic extremism.

Curated and introduced by
André Naffis-Sahely

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