Mohammed Dib

Mohammed Dib (born July 21, 1920, Tlemcen, Algeria—died May 2, 2003, La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France) was an Algerian novelist, poet, and playwright, known for his early trilogy on Algeria, La Grande Maison (1952; “The Big House”), L’Incendie (1954; “The Fire”), and Le Métier à tisser (1957; “The Loom”), in which he described the Algerian people’s awakening to self-consciousness and to the impending struggle for independence that began in 1954. The trilogy recounts the years 1938–42.

Dib, who was at various times a teacher, accountant, rug maker, journalist, and drama critic, wrote of the poor Algerian worker and peasant in his early realistic novels. From the time of his exile from Algeria, in 1959, except for brief sojourns in that country, Dib lived in France.

Dib’s later novels, apart from Un Été africain (1959; “An African Summer”), which retains the realistic mode of expression in his description of a people in revolt, are marked by the use of symbol, myth, allegory, and fantasy to portray the French colonial repression of the Algerian people, the search for the authentic expression of an Algerian personality, the war for independence and its effects, the new Algeria after independence and the struggle of the technocrats for control, and the plight of the Algerian emigrant worker in France. These novels—La Danse du roi (1960; “The Dance of the King”), Qui se souvient de la mer (1962; Who Remembers the Sea), Cours sur la rive sauvage (1964; “Run on the Wild Shore”), Dieu en barbarie (1970; “God in Barbary”), Le Maître de chasse (1973; “The Hunt Master”), and Habel (1977)—like the early novels, express optimism in the brotherhood of mankind. Similarly, he wrote for those who are dispossessed through economic exploitation. Dib’s use of the fantastic, the erotic, and the voyage metaphor are integral to his description of the search for truth and self. His later works include La Nuit sauvage (1995; The Savage Night) and Simorgh (2003).

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Though he worked in a variety of genres, Dib viewed himself as essentially a poet. He wrote several collections of poetry, including Ombre gardienne (1961; “Guardian Shadow”), Formulaires (1970; “Forms”), Omneros (1975; Omneros), and L’Enfant Jazz (1998; “Jazz Boy”), and he published two collections of novellas, Au café (1956; “In the Café”) and Le Talisman (1966; The Talisman). Dib was also the author of a film scenario and two plays.