Algerian poet Djamal Amrani was born in 1935 in Sour El Gozlane. Central to his life and work were his involvement in the Algerian liberation movement, and his arrest and torture by the French Army for participating in a 1956 student strike. Amrani was imprisoned for two years for his revolutionary activities, and then expelled to France.
From this ordeal came his moving autobiographical narrative Le Témoin (The Witness), published in 1960 by Les Éditions de Minuit. He was a career diplomat and journalist before he decided to devote himself to writing and to his radio broadcasts, which drew a wide audience with such shows as “Uninterrupted Poetry.” He received the Pablo Neruda medal in 2004 for his body of work, published between 1964 and 2003. His books include Soleil de notre nuit (Sun of Our Night, 1964), L’été de ta peau (The Summer of Your Skin, 1982), and La nuit du dedans (The Night Within, 2003). He died in Algiers in 2005.
