This one came to me as a recommendation to follow Clarice Lispector's short stories. I wasn't sure what to expect when I ordered it from Amazon, and ended up with something that is quite hard to describe.

This follows a young Algerian woman in modern Paris/Algeria interspersed with stories built from primary source material from the French invasion of Algeria and Algerian war for independence. It is deeply political and concerned with identity of the woman who has been raised under French rule, freed from the harem by learning French and having a French education, but who is also deeply nationalistic.

It's not something that I would have picked up had it not been a recommendation, but it was interesting and a novel that I will think about in the future. I think in the French, it might be significantly better than in the English translation I read. ( )

j'ai si peu apprécié que je ne l'ai pas terminé ( )

Algeriske Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, bedre kjent under psevdonymet Assia Djebar (f. 1936) er både forfatter, oversetter og filmskaper, og i følge Wikipedia betraktes hun som en av Nord-Afrikas mest kjente og innflytelsesrike forfattere. I årenes løp har hun utgitt 17 bøker - den første i 1957 - og hun er flere ganger nominert til Nobels litteraturpris. "L´Amour, la fantasia" ("Kjærligheten, krigen" på norsk) utkom i 1985.

Det er ikke lett å skulle gi en samlende beskrivelse av denne boka, som - slik tittelen antyder - gir et mangefascettert bilde av Frankrikes erobring av Algerie i 1830 og tiden som fulgte under det som til slutt skulle bli 130 års okkupasjon. Boka inneholder mange ulike fortellerstemmer - i begynnelsen i første rekke seierherrenes historie i forbindelse med selve okkupasjonen, som endte i et blodbad uten sidestykke, og hvor soldatene i stedet for å opptre som verdige seierherrer, endte med å plyndre byen. Deres syn på de innfødte var at det dreide seg om barbarere. Etter hvert som handlingen skrider frem, er man som leser imidlertid overhode ikke i tvil om hvem som var de egentlige barbarerne ...

"Kjærligheten, krigen", som etter hvert fortelles av algeriske kvinner som ble ofre for franskmennenes okkupasjon, viser hvordan historien og alt som skjedde så ut fra de beseiredes side. Et høyt utviklet samfunn ble brutt ned og gikk til grunne pga. okkupasjonen, og alle forsøk på å ivareta egen verdighet ble slått hardt ned på. Dette er en bok som beskriver kvinnenes kamp og lidelse, og det gjøres i et poetisk språk som imponerer. Fordi jeg selv ikke kjenner særlig til denne delen av historien, fant jeg det noen ganger litt vanskelig å henge med i svingene, men etter hvert skjønte jeg bokas system og rytme. Blant annet at jeg-personen i boka faktisk er forfatteren selv og hennes egen historie ...

"Det var femten år siden El-Djezair var falt i hendene på de Vantro. Oran hadde fulgt etter, utlevert gjennom beyens svik. Blida, ved foten av Atlas, lå for nær og hadde ikke kunnet motstå fiendens angrep; to ganger var den blitt tømt for maurere som flyktet fra den franske hæren, på samme måte som Médéa-la-haute, der Emiren flere ganger hadde hatt sete sammen med løytnantene sine og dit han for øvrig hadde innkalt høvdingene for fjellene omkring. I det fjerne hadde Constantine, "lidenskapenes by", forsvart seg hus for hus under det andre angrepet, så ble den utlevert til frenetisk plyndring mens bey Ahmed fortsatte motstandskampen i Aurés." (side 65)

Bokas orginalitet, den spesielle vinklingen og det nærmest poetiske språket gjør at jeg er i tvil om jeg skal gi terningkast fem eller seks. Den har nemlig utvilsomt kvaliteter som litterær klassiker, og er en bok man kan lese flere ganger og oppdage nye sider ved. Jeg slet litt med å komme gjennom den til tider, men det sier nok mer om mine manglende kunnskaper på området og heller mindre om bokas kvaliteter. Ut fra en helhetsvurdering av den er jeg kommet til at det må bli terningkast seks. Dette er en spennende og interessant forfatter jeg kommer til å følge med stor interesse i tiden fremover! Og jeg er ganske sikker på at hun en dag kommer til å få Nobels litteraturpris!

Utgitt første gang: 1985
Originaltittel: L´Amour, la fantasia
Utgitt første gang på norsk med tittelen "Kjærlighet, fantasia": 2003
Denne utgangen er utgitt: 2010
Oversatt: Karin Holter
Forlag: Agora Press
Antall sider: 274 ( )

Fairly interesting but largely boring. There's a certain artistic beauty to this book that I found appealing, and a number of passages were very intriguing. However, as a whole, this was not an engaging read, and I struggled to stay attentive. ( )

1001 words about a modern day sheherazade…

After being secretly proud of myself for keeping my readerly expectations to a minimum when I reviewed the last two much hyped novelists back to back, I had no such prejudice when starting Algerian author Assia Djebar’s 1985 novel, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade. In fact I had never heard of her, and this book only made my reading stack based on lists that have been floating around the net suggesting possible 2009 Nobel prize contenders… (now, be honest, most of you have not heard of half these writers either…)

My brow (low as is it) raised when I read that Assia Djebar is the owner of some serious literary credentials: 1996 Neustad Prize winner and the Yourcenar prize the following year. She became a member of the prestigious Académie Française in 2005 and she is currently professor of Francophone Literature at New York University.

I will admit now up front, at first glance I had preconceived notions of a ‘lighter’ read. I was surprised when I thumbed the first few pages to see a Glossary of Berber-Arabic terms, a Chronology of Algerian History, and the Contents listing the three titled parts to the narrative; with the ’Part III’ broken into five ’movements’. Notice was duly taken, I settled into the book and when the desert dust and last shrill clamor faded, I found myself inexplicably on the other side of a Fantasia, and Assia Djebar’s third novel…

Fantasia (cultural definition): An equestrian event, a traditional closing of a Berber wedding celebration, it is a martial performance, and also is referred to as the “Game of Gunpowder” it symbolizes a strong attachment to tradition. Fantasia (musical definition): a musical composition featuring free improvisation by the composer.

Cavalcade: A procession or parade, that focuses on a re-enactment of important historical events. It is a participation event, as opposed to a spectacle.

Many, many historic and interrelated ‘witnessed’ events, first person reports, narrative snapshots but no conventional plot= no plot synopsis. I suppose one COULD say, a Berber Arab exile looks back and makes sense of her country’s and her own personal emancipation from cultural-colonial tyrannies… but I won’t. But I can say that the prose is a tour de force: from succinct reporting to a rich lyrical extravagance, from sensuous impressionistic set pieces to keenly nuanced and detailed renderings of landscape and atmosphere.

Call it an exoskeleton, since it’s a Fantasia after all…Since the book overtly incorporates the structure of a musical fantasia (and since I have NO formal knowledge of music theory, I had to look it up!): its says it is characterized by free improvisation, a loose ‘arrangement’ of thematically contrapuntal sections or ‘Fugue’ overlaying each other to enhance and develop themes… There are two narratives, the first in the “current” time, a narrator look’s back on her formative years as an Arab girl in colonial Algiers. The second consist of The Cavalcade: a pageant of two counterpointed histories, the first more recent past, during the 1954-62 Algerian War of Independence largely from the point of view of the colonized (Algerians) and the distant, 1830 French conquest culled from actual first person accounts, primarily from the perspective of the conquerors (French).

There are thematic dichotomies, or dialectics Djebar explores through the novel’s contrapuntal structure, or Fugue. The colonized vs the colonizers, the theme of (big L) Language: the oral tradition of capturing and expressing the past of the Berber tribesmen vs the French, written language. Cultural repression as in the social mores of the veil ( the subsumed feminine identity as entrenched in the traditions of her homeland) vs emancipation ( feminine self expression). The self vs the Other (the self is equated as the colonized, the Other the colonizers). A major leitmotiv in the novel is the theme of Love Letter and the written word. In an early scene, the narrator recounts how she and her French-schooled sisters have clandestinely sent out ‘Love Letters’ to unknown paramours listed in the personal sections of a magazine. It is counterpointed with the dispatches of the war historian’s correspondences sent back to France. These early correspondents have conflicted emotions about the monstrosities of war, and are cause for self examination. We develop a sense that the colonizers are attracted to this alien world of Algiers, like an uncontrollable desire for a woman: it is equated to forcible sexual conquest:

these new crusaders of the colonial era, overwhelmed by such a clamor of voices, wallow in the depths of concentrated sound. Penetrated and deflowered; Africa is taken despite the protesting cries that she cannot stifle.

This highly complex structure used in the novel is a wonderfully interesting arrangement: there are five sections in each movement, a ‘Voice” section, a short narrative of a tale of death or survival in the War of Independence, a titled prose poem, followed by another Voice section, this is then followed by a section called ‘Embrace’ an vignette of an event or scene from the first War of conquest. Overall though, there is an imbalance due to the fugue portion which is contained in the five ‘movements’ of part III, it is overweight with at least two of the Voice sections seemed to me to not add anything thematically to their counterparts, they seemed to be repetitious. It should be emphasized heavily that the novel is NOT disjointed as it may sound by my simple breakdown. Djebar artfully ties together multiple elements that I have not even touched on: images and motifs of cultural ceremony (such the ululations of the tribes women, shrill cries of celebration or lament) , the allusions to the role of the storyteller embedded in their culture in the figure of Sheherazade..and finally the Muslim/Quranic elements and her probably controversial depiction on its deleterious affect on the role of women in Algerian society.

This work is first part of a projected Quartet. (I ordered the second novel, A Sister to Sherehazade )
I get the sense that Fantasia is a story that the writer had to get out as if her life depended on it. She found a form to give her country’s chaotic past a supremely rich voice. What is unclear is if her Sherazade’s voice finds listening, unveiled ears in her homeland. ( )