Abdelkader Djemaï
Biography
Abdelkader Djemaï was born in Oran on the Algerian Mediterranean coast in 1948 and has lived in exile in France since 1993. As a journalist, he worked with the magazine Les Temps Modernes, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre. He is the author of numerous novellas, plays and novels, such as 31 Eagle Street (1998), Camping (2002) or Zorah on the terrace (2010). For his literary writing he was awarded the Amerigo Vespucci Prize, the Tropenpreis and the Albert Camus Discovery Prize. In fact, Abdelkader Djemaï has a great affinity with Albert Camus, also of Algerian origin, to whom he wrote an essay entitled Camus in Oran dedicated.
Last Released
The Last Night of the Emir
In his narrationThe Last Night of the Emir Abdelkader Djemaï succeeds in describing the Emir's last hours before his departure for an unknown country and at the same time in drawing a picture of his native Algeria at the time of French colonization.
Reality and fiction are intertwined here - but it is neither a biography nor a historical outline. Instead, Djemaï focuses on the human size of Emir Abdelkader – a man who was ahead of his time, full of openness, tolerance and respect.
Translated from French by Christine Belakhdar
