Jean-Paul Sartre's famous question, "For whom do we write?" strikes close to home for francophone writers from the Maghreb. Do these writers address their compatriots, many of whom are illiterate or read no French, or a broader audience beyond Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia? In Experimental Nations, Reda Bensmaia argues powerfully against the tendency to view their works not as literary creations worth considering for their innovative style or language but as "ethnographic" texts and to appraise them only against the "French literary canon." He casts fresh light on the original...
Jean-Paul Sartre's famous question, "For whom do we write?" strikes close to home for francophone writers from the Maghreb. Do these writers addres...
A study examining the complex relationship between "ethics" and "history". He confronts topics ranging from the conquest of America and 19th-century colonialism, to democracy and conflicts of the "self" versus the "other".
A study examining the complex relationship between "ethics" and "history". He confronts topics ranging from the conquest of America and 19th-century c...
The celebrated theorist Tzvetan Todorov offers here a thought provoking study of the complex relationship between 'ethics' and 'history'. In exploring such issues as how one practices and assesses equality among different societies, Todorov confronts topics ranging from the conquest of America and nineteenth-century colonialism, to democracy and conflicts of the Self versus the Other.
The celebrated theorist Tzvetan Todorov offers here a thought provoking study of the complex relationship between 'ethics' and 'history'. In exploring...
It is to me that we owe our immortality, and this is the story that proves it beyond all doubt. With this sentence Rene Belletto begins a novel that compresses every genre he has worked in thriller, science fiction, experimental literature, horror into one breathless narrative in which what is at stake is nothing less than our own immortality. Playing with the expectations of the reader, Belletto constructs a logical puzzle that defies logic, much like the almost-perpetual motion machine invented by the narrator of this novel and his father. What sets the story in (perpetual) motion is a...
It is to me that we owe our immortality, and this is the story that proves it beyond all doubt. With this sentence Rene Belletto begins a novel that c...
One fat victim ( everything about him oozed opulence and theft on a grand scale ) is relieved of his crocodile wallet. In it Ossama finds not just a gratifying amount of cash, but also a letter a letter from the Ministry of Public Works, cutting off its ties to the fat man. A source of rich bribes heretofore, the fat man is now too hot to handle; he s a fabulously wealthy real-estate developer, lately much in the news because one of his cheap buildings has just collapsed, killing 50 tenants. Ossama by some divine decree has become the repository of a scandal of epic proportions. And so he...
One fat victim ( everything about him oozed opulence and theft on a grand scale ) is relieved of his crocodile wallet. In it Ossama finds not just a g...
An NYRB Classics Original Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who arranged for the publication of his first novel, My Friends, Bove enjoyed a busy literary career, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, his novels and stories were admired by Rilke, the surrealists, Camus, and Beckett, who said of him that "more than anyone else he has an instinct for the essential detail." Henry Duchemin and His Shadows is the ideal introduction to...
An NYRB Classics Original Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his ...
