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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Traumatic landscapes: earthquakes and identity in Franco-Algerian fiction by Maissa Bey and Nina Bouraoui
Author:Loth, Laura
Year:2016
Periodical:Research in African Literatures (ISSN 0034-5210)
Volume:47
Issue:1
Pages:21-38
Language:English
Geographic term:Algeria
Subjects:novels
women
social conditions
images
About persons:Maïssa Bey pseud. for Samia Benameur
Nina Bouraoui (1967-)ISNI
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v047/47.1.loth.pdf
Abstract:This article examines how two Algerian writers use the destruction of the landscape through 'natural' disasters to reflect on trauma, memory, and the nature of sociocultural conditions of women in contemporary Algeria. In Maissa Bey's 'Surtout ne te retourne pas' (2005), the destruction wrought by the earthquake provides the novel's protagonist with the crucial moment to restructure her identity and redefine her community, much as the population affected by the earthquake. In the case of Nina Bouraoui's 'Le Jour du séisme' (1999), the earthquake stands in as a symbol for the nostalgic chasm that exists between adulthood in France and the memory of childhood spent in Algeria. Opposing the breach in the landscape to cultural and psychological ruptures and geographical borders, both authors use the séisme to challenge hierarchies of trauma in the postcolonial setting. Bibliogr., notes, ref, sum. [Journal abstract]
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