Guest of the ilb 2003
Leïla Marouane was born in Algeria in 1960. She
studied Medicine and Literature in Algiers and then worked as a
journalist. Due to the tense situation in Algeria, she has lived
and worked as a freelance writer in Paris since 1990. To date she
has published four novels and one collection of short stories.
All her works are about the oppression of women in her native country
and the slow decay of Algeria’s once blossoming cities, where Western
modernity and Islamic fundamentalism collide.
Set against the background of political events in Algeria in the late
80’s, 'La fille de la casbah' (1996; Engl: The Girl from the Casbah)
tells the story of a young teacher who successfully defends herself
against her parents’ plans but then fails at realising her own goals in
life. Neither Islam nor the Western way of life offer her the
stability she needs, until finally her life ends in a bloody nightmare.
Marouane identifies with neither Islam, Judaism, nor
Christianity. In her opinion they all place the woman in a
subordinate role. In her second novel 'Le Ravisseur' (1999; Engl:
The Kidnapper), which describes the fate of an Algerian woman, she
sharply criticises the right of the man in Islam to disown his
wife. With linguistic sensitivity she discusses the consequences
of a traditional and increasingly anachronistic legal maxim.
In Algeria, Marouane was herself singled out for attacks against her
person since, as a columnist and social critic, she sympathised with
the Algerian women’s rights movement. She wrote her third novel
'Le châtiment des hyprocrites' (2001; Engl: The Punishment of the
Hypocrites) to keep an act of violence which was largely hushed up, the
murder of a friend, from being forgotten. It tells the story of
Fatima Kosra, who was abducted, abused and impregnated by Islamists.
She cannot get over the traumatic experience, but it temporarily
recedes into the background when she meets the great love of her youth.
The man, who lives in Paris, takes her to France with him, where her
past eventually catches up with her and she becomes a murderer. The
novel 'La jeune fille et la mère' (2005; t: The girl and the mother)
deals with the role of Algeria's women by the merciless description of
the fight between a girls and her disillusioned mother. Maroune's novel
cannot find a happy ending as long as they deal with the situation in
Algeria.
In 2004, the writer was awarded the LiBeraturpreis at the Frankfurt
Book Fair. She received the distiguished Prix Jean-Claude Izzo for 'La
jeune fille et la mère' in 2006.
Dirk Naguschewski
© internationales literaturfestival berlin | 
privat.jpg)