What do you think?
Rate this book
Tlemcen or Places of Writing by Mohammed Dib
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Translated from the French by Guy Bennett. TLEMCEN OR PLACES OF WRITING is an unusual, hybrid part memoir of the author's coming of age and coming to writing in his native Algeria, and part meditation on the nature of writing itself as well as on the task and responsibility of the writer. The text is complimented by some fifty photographs taken by the author in the Tlemcen of his youth, images of a past that has vanished and which the text seeks to reveal. The original French edition of this work was awarded the Grand prix de la Francophonie de l'Academie francaise on its publication in 1994.
- GenresNonfiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Mohammed Dib
63 books122 followersAlgerian 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
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
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 18, 2012
Evocative brief memoir of writing or becoming a writer: how one begins. In Dib's case at a table in an Algerian courtyard, at the "center of the house." Writing's genesis in place. Childhood also as a place. Lost to memory. Recalled to the page as story, as ambiance. The first writing table almost a public space, at the heart(h) of the home. The writer's task revealed, yet concealed in plain view. As he is teased and talked about, yet permitted his transgressive acts of description, interpretation & fabulation. The author's black and white photos from 1946 accompany the text.
January 23, 2016
A very beautiful book, with charming photographs, and a pretty effective example of what nostalgia feels like. Tlemcen is one of the rare books that can be read in an hour for pleasure (nice but sad story about what has been lost of one man's home as an adolescent), but also subjected to all kinds of high-falutin' literary and philosophical analysis about the impact of one's surroundings on one's self and art.
February 21, 2024
Fav 2022
En lisant ce livre, je me suis remémoré mes souvenirs d’enfance à Tlemcen. Je crois que je fus très chanceux ,comme je prétend que Mohammed Dib le fut, de vivre dans cette ville magnifique. Sidi Brahim et ses environs resteront à jamais gravés dans ma mémoire et je garderai cette nostalgie jusqu’à la fin de mes jours.
En lisant ce livre, je me suis remémoré mes souvenirs d’enfance à Tlemcen. Je crois que je fus très chanceux ,comme je prétend que Mohammed Dib le fut, de vivre dans cette ville magnifique. Sidi Brahim et ses environs resteront à jamais gravés dans ma mémoire et je garderai cette nostalgie jusqu’à la fin de mes jours.
February 9, 2017
Quick Review: This is a beautiful little book broaching the subject of writing and tracing the journey of Dib as a writer. It is also a meditation on nostalgia: the fragments in which this quasi-memoir, quasi-meditation seeks to retrace and rebuild the decay and loss of places lost to the realm of childhood within the realm of writing. Where the inclusion of photographs in a Sebald novel often have a disjointed relationship with the text, the inclusion of photographs (by Bordas and Dib in the original 1994 text; here, in this edition, by Dib and the late Mme Colette Dib) assist in the author's nostalgic conjuring.
June 5, 2017
The format of this book is new and very awesome. It comes with solid objects in a pouch that go along with the story as "evidence". I'd never seen anything like it before and it is very cool. It really allows the story to come to life.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews