Amin Zaoui
Biography
Amin Zaoui, born in 1956, is a writer and journalist at libeté. His first Arabic novel was banned throughout Algeria. After the publication of his second novel in 1992, Zaoui narrowly escaped an assassination attempt aimed at him. In 1995, after the public burning of his novel by the Algerian Islamists, he accepted the invitation of the international writers' parliament to come to France. Since 2000 he has been living and working in Algeria again.
Zaoui writes with a sharp pen in the style of Arabic storytelling and poetry tradition against hypocrisy, violence and backwardness; his stories are both farce and analysis of the socio-political situation in Algeria.
Last Released
The Last Jew of Tamentit
Barkahoum and Abraham are a modern day Jewish-Muslim couple in the Algerian capital. In a pizzeria in Algiers' fashionable district, they tell each other stories, their history and that of their ancestors: Andalusia, North Africa – the expulsion. For centuries, Jews and Muslims lived peacefully side by side, shared common places, and maintained similar customs. Like a ring parable that raises the equality of all monotheistic religions to a principle, Zaoui, for whom the banishment of the body from public places and the feigned prudery in Muslim society are a thorn in the side, is circumcised according to Jewish-Muslim tradition Link of the unifying ring of the novel.
Translated from French byChristine Belakhdar
