Mohammed Dib’s Followers (122)

Mohammed Dib

Born

in Tlemcen, Algeria

July 21, 1920

Died

May 02, 2003

Genre

Science Fiction & Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Poetry

edit data

Algerian poet and novelist. Born in Tlemcen, Dib held various jobs as a teacher, accountant, weaver and rug designer, interpreter, and journalist before turning to full-time writing. In 1959 he moved to France, where he has continued to reside, although he returns regularly to Algeria.

With the death of Kateb Yacine in 1989, Dib became the undisputed doyen of Algerian literature. He was not only one of the first Maghrebian francophone authors of the post-World War II renaissance, publishing poems as early as 1947, but also continued to be both prolific and innovative. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Dib has constantly sought to renew and revitalize his writing. Besides being Algeria's foremost living novelist, he is a major poet.

Dib was, Algerian poet and novelist. Born in Tlemcen, Dib held various jobs as a teacher, accountant, weaver and rug designer, interpreter, and journalist before turning to full-time writing. In 1959 he moved to France, where he has continued to reside, although he returns regularly to Algeria.

With the death of Kateb Yacine in 1989, Dib became the undisputed doyen of Algerian literature. He was not only one of the first Maghrebian francophone authors of the post-World War II renaissance, publishing poems as early as 1947, but also continued to be both prolific and innovative. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Dib has constantly sought to renew and revitalize his writing. Besides being Algeria's foremost living novelist, he is a major poet.

Dib was, with Feraoun, Mammeri, and Kateb, a member of the ‘Generation of 52’, so dubbed because of the appearance in 1952 of important first novels by Dib (La Grande Maison) and Mammeri (La Colline oubliée) and sometimes renamed the ‘Generation of 54’ to refer to the major political event of modern Algerian history, the outbreak of the war of independence.

La Grande Maison, the first volume of a loosely knit trilogy (L'Algérie), is a naturalistic description of life in the streets and housing projects where the poor live. In this work the main characters are, in Zolaesque fashion, subordinate to the looming allegorical presence of Hunger. The remaining volumes (L'Incendie, 1954; Le Métier à tisser, 1957) continue to reflect Dib's left-wing social and political commitments during the 1940s and 1950s. His early novels have been widely read in Algeria and have been introduced into the school and university curricula.

Dib's work took a dramatic turn in the early 1960s when he forsook the naturalistic, ‘ethnographic’ novel for a more interiorized and oneiric discourse. His best known novel, Qui se souvient de la mer (1962), ostensibly deals with the Algerian War, but is particularly remarkable for its many-layered, surreal, and futuristic imagery. In a liminary note, Dib acknowledges the importance to his creative vision of Picasso's Guernica and science fiction, but we also find evidence of the influence of Freud and Jung in the subterranean and oceanic worlds where the action unfolds as well as in the mythic portrayal of the woman and the mother.

Dib also published, at this time, the first of a series of brilliant collections of poetry. Ombre gardienne (1961), although highly rarefied, provides an early link to the novels, for several of the texts in the collection first appeared as songs inserted into the trilogy. If the prose has evolved over the years, the poetry has, on the contrary, remained fairly consistent in style, perhaps because, as Dib once remarked, he is unable to practise spontaneous automatic writing in writing his novels—even when the result seems oneiric—whereas he often uses such procedures in composing the poems.

Dib's many novels may be divided roughly into four groups: the early naturalistic trilogy; the interiorized psychological, oneiric novels, usually set in Algeria (Qui se souvient de la mer; Cours sur la rive sauvage, 1964; La Danse du roi, 1968; Habel, 1977); the two novels of an unfinished trilogy about Algeria during the years of crisis in the early 1970s (Dieu en Barbarie, 1970; Le Maître de chasse, 1973); and the ‘nordic novels’ set in Algeria, Finland, and France (Les Terrasses d'Orsol, 1985; Le Sommeil d'Ève, 1989; Neiges de marbre, 1990). Some works defy easy classification, however, being transitional, such as some of the early short stories in Au café (1955) and Le Talisman (1966) and the at-once realistic and psychological Un été africain (1959), in which the identity quest of a young girl unfolds before the muted sounds and imagery of the Algerian War.

Dib's poems in Formulaires (1970), Omneros (1975), Feu beau feu (1979), and Ô vive (1987) are hermetic and derive much of their power from their linguistic virtu ...more

Combine Editions
Mohammed Dib’s books

Average rating: 3.76 · 1,040 ratings · 158 reviews · 63 distinct works • Similar authors

	La Grande Maison 3.85 avg rating — 371 ratings — published 1952 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	L'incendie 3.81 avg rating — 149 ratings — published 1954 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	ثلاثية محمد ديب، النول، الحريق، الدار الكبيرة by Mohammed Dib, سامي الدروبي (translator) 4.10 avg rating — 83 ratings — published 1970 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Le métier à tisser by Mohammed Dib, محمد ديب 3.82 avg rating — 61 ratings — published 1957 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Savage Night: LA Nuit Sauvage by Mohammed Dib, C. Dickson (Translator) 3.90 avg rating — 50 ratings — published 1995 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Un Été africain 3.62 avg rating — 45 ratings — published 1959 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Who Remembers the Sea: A Novel by Mohammed Dib, Louis Tremaine (translator) 3.58 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 1985 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	At the Café and The Talisman by Mohammed Dib, Mildred Mortimer (Afterword), C. Dickson (Translator) 3.93 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 1996 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tlemcen or Places of Writing by Mohammed Dib, Guy Bennett (Translator) 4.40 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 1994 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	LA Trip: A Novel in Verse (Green Integer) by Mohammed Dib, Paul Vangelisti (Translation) 3.62 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2003 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Mohammed Dib…

Series by Mohammed Dib

Algérie (1 book)
by

Mohammed Dib

3.85 avg rating — 371 ratings

Quotes by Mohammed Dib (?)

“Respecte la terre, et elle te respectera. Travaille-la, elle te le rendra au centuple.”
― Mohammed Dib, L'incendie

12 likes

“Agissez comme si votre mort était pour demain, mais accomplissez vos devoirs comme si vous deviez vivre l'éternité.”
― Mohammed Dib, L'incendie

7 likes

“الأمر لا يتعلق بالشفقة او بعدم الشفقة على الشعب. اني لافتح عيني فاشاهد الجميع فاعاين بصفة عامة انه لا وجود للشعب. لا وجود للشعب حقيقة! لا وجود له عندما نجمع الناس اكواما ثم نصيح بهم : انتم الشعب، انتم الشعب الذي يفعل كل شيء، و يعرف كل شيء! فهذا الشعب "ريح في ريح"!
المنسج”
― Mohammed Dib, Le métier à tisser

tags: الشعب-السلطة

2 likes

See all Mohammed Dib's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Reading with Style: WI 17-18 30.1 Holiday Bonus!	21	45	Jan 16, 2018 06:24PM
Around the Year i...: Ed's 2018 Plan	4	63	Jan 23, 2018 09:31AM
Ultimate Popsugar...: Week 3: 1/12 - 1/18	298	548	Feb 09, 2018 07:09PM
Reading with Style: WI 17-18 Completed Tasks	1126	193	Feb 28, 2018 09:00PM
Stress Free Readi...: POPSUGAR Reading Challenge	13	127	Mar 23, 2018 11:39AM
Libri dal mondo: Algeria: autori	1	34	Oct 08, 2018 11:02AM

More…

Mohammed Dib’s Followers (122)

Mohammed Dib

Combine EditionsMohammed Dib’s books

Series by Mohammed Dib

Topics Mentioning This Author

Combine Editions
Mohammed Dib’s books