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© Hartwig Klappert
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Salim Bachi
Algeria/France
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Salim Bachi was born in
Algiers in 1971 and grew up in Annaba in Eastern Algeria. He studied
French Language and Literature in both cities and at the Sorbonne. He
has been living in Paris since 1997. Bachi made his début with short
stories, published in various newspapers such as »Le Monde
diplomatique«. Already with his first novel »Le Chien d'Ulysse« (2001;
t: Ulysses's dog) which received three awards, Bachi proved himself to
be an important representative of the flourishing literature from
modern Maghreb. The story takes place in the fictional and archetypal
Algerian city of Kirtha, whose very name refers back to the old numidic
capital and to the multifaceted history of North Africa since Roman
colonisation. As in James Joyce's »Ulysses«, whose structure serves as
a model, the plot is rich in allusions and takes place on a single day:
on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of the Algerian
president Boudiaf in 1992, when the conflict between the government and
Islamists in the Algerian civil war was heading towards its climax. The
nocturnal aberrations of a literature student, his dreams and
fantasies, alongside the life stories of his friends and acquaintances,
reveal the lack of orientation found in a whole generation, for whom
all values have disappeared into violence and misery. Without taking a
stand for one side, the multi-perspective novel creates a sometimes
ironic portrait of society and, significantly, cannot be obtained in
Algeria although it is not officially banned.
Bachi describes the
precursors of present day Algeria in his second novel, »La Kahéna«
(2003; t: Villa Kahéna), set in colonial times. At the centre is a
house, built in the fictional city of Kirtha by a settler from Malta.
After an adventurous trip to Cayenne and into the Brazilian rainforest,
the settler obtains riches and honours, yet towards the end of his life
he finds himself between the front lines of the colonial powers and the
local population striving for independence. As in Bachi's subsequent
works, history here becomes a means of orientation for the future.
»Memory can be an illness, a burden, but to hate memory means to lapse
into barbarianism. One should not freeze memory and take the risk that
it be transformed into myth, but for the same reason one shouldn't hide
it either.«
Bachi's most recent novel, »Tuez-les tous« (2006; t:
Kill them all), highlights the social and political backdrop of Islamic
fundamentalism in the example of one of the culprits of the 9/11
attacks, and interprets it as a murderous way out of the dilemma of the
modern Arab world, which both admires and despises the West.
The
author was awarded the Prix Goncourt du premier roman, the Bourse
Prince Pierre de Monaco de la découverte, the Prix littéraire de la
vocation of the Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation, and the Prix
Tropiques. He has been a guest of the Villa Medici in Rome and lives in
Paris.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Der Hund des Odysseus
Lenos-Verlag
Basel, 2002
[T: Michael von Killisch-Horn]
Tuez-les tous
Gallimard
Paris, 2005
Autoportrait avec Grenade
Ed. du Rocher
Monaco, 2005
Villa Kahéna
Lenos-Verlag
Basel, 2006
[T: Regula Renschler]
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