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Algeria

A close-up of a vinyl record player
Photo by Adrian Korte on Unsplash
Unfasten the Silk of Your Silence
By Souad Labbize
Algerian poet Souad Labbize pens a sequence of love poems to the voice of a female singer.
Translated from French by Susanna Lang
MultimediaMultilingual
sun setting behind a field of grass
Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash
Anna
By Samira Negrouche
your mother like Mecca is a promised land—you must go there only once
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
PEN International Celebrates 100 Years
By Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
PEN members today not only gather for literary events in their home countries and internationally but also defend writers and the freedom to write worldwide.
Treasures
By Mohamed Magani
She tapped the photo and said, “When I am dead, this is the photo of me I want you to keep.”
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Time-Travelers, Fisherwomen, and Sleuths: Arabic Young Adult Literature
By Elisabeth Jaquette
While Arabic publishing has historically focused on literature for adults and young children, recent years have seen an increasing number of titles aimed at a young adult readership.
Black Saturday
By Djamila Morani
Soothsayers tell the truth even when they’re lying.
Translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain
“I Write in French to Tell the French I Am Not French”: Algerian Francophone Poetry
By Marilyn Hacker
Algerian Francophone poetry was largely outside, and in contrast to, the post-World War II movement in French poetry of disengagement from political causes.
From “The Night Inside”
By Djamal Amrani
The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
Beneath a Pile of Rubble
By Djamal Amrani
Because death is stronger than hunger
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
Minus One
By Samira Negrouche
I would like/ in a faraway language/ to tell you what I don’t/ understand
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
A shadowy orange canyon with twisting rock formations
Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash
In the Shadow of Grenada
By Samira Negrouche
She tells me not to be / a holy land / or a mine of tenderness
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
Celebration of the Absent One
By Habib Tengour
The father’s house is a living language/ Open to guests passing through
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
The Tartar from the Kremlin
By Habib Tengour
This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards/ Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Recalculating the Hexagon: The New French Literature
By Susan Harris
These writers have migrated geographically and, in some cases, linguistically.
from “The Eagle”
By Aziz Chouaki
Boulevard Barbès, Rochechouart, like a film clip, Arabs, blacks, half-whites.
Translated from French by Lulu Norman
from “Muslim: A Novel”
By Zahia Rahmani
I was the daughter of a tainted man.
Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
People Behaving Badly
By Susan Harris
Many greet the clean slate of a new year by pledging to chalk up only virtue and moderation.
Breathtaking View
By Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès
A proponent of “lean management,” Wang-li Wong works to streamline activity within his company.
Translated from French by Hannah Chute
There Is No Map: The New Italian(s)
By Alta L. Price
Who is Italian, what is the Italian language, and who deserves to write in it?
Cous Cous Klan
By Tahar Lamri
I leave to my parents their portable country, so magnificent in their memory and in the stories they tell.
Translated from Italian by Robert Elliot
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
from “Spring”
By Rachid Boudjedra
In fact, Teldj no longer felt anything at all. She only pretended to. She only thought about Algeria.
Translated from French by André Naffis-Sahely
Jeanine
By Matthias Picard
That night, it was a Ford that stopped.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
from “Edgard’s Lessons”
By Jean Sénac
If singing my love is loving my country, I am a soldier
Translated from French by Douglas Basford
Multilingual
Demonsterate
By Nawel Louerrad
Translated from French by Canan Marasligil
Is This How Women Grow Up?
By Leïla Marouane
When the massacres began in 1990 we had our doors bullet-proofed.
Translated from French by Alison Anderson
Multilingual
Seismic Activity
By Mohamed Magani
One summer in Germany, the obscure and tenuous link between literature and seismic activity tightened and took on all the solidity of a secure and binding knot.
Translated from French by Catherine Spencer
Sofiane B., Age Twenty
By Maïssa Bey
Sofiane is dead. I learned the news from the paper.
Translated from French by Suzanne Ruta
The Truth According to Parviz Mansoor Samadi
By Amara Lakhous
I still remember the first time I saw him.
Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein
Scheherazade, C’est Moi? An Interview with Amara Lakhous
By Suzanne Ruta
Algeria was imploding into civil war in 1993 when Amara Lakhous, born in 1970 in Algiers, wrote his first novel.
Translated from Italian by the author
Absence
By Yasmina Khadra
Bare chests will be covered up, pretentious laughter gasps its last; late nights, idleness, sleeping late-gone!
Translated from French by Lulu Norman
“Villon and I,” from “Territoires d’Outre-Ville”
By Mounsi
People aren't born delinquent; they become so according to the accidents of their lives and their response to them.
Translated from French by Martin Sorrell
From “The Butcher’s Aesthetics”
By Mohamed Magani
The gulps of coffee fell heavily on Zineddine Ayachi's stomach, like tar soup.
Translated from French by Lulu Norman
Bloodred Dew
By Mohammed Dib
He cleared his throat, stopped talking, and a thin trickle of blood ran from each corner of his mouth.
Translated from French by C. Dickson