Kateb Yacine

  • Kateb Yacine
Writer, Playwright
(Male)
Principal country concerned : Column : Theater, Cinema/tv, Literature

Yacine Kateb, better known by his pen name Kateb Yacine, born August 2, 1929 in Constantine, Algeria, and died October 28, 1989 in Grenoble, France, is a writer, poet, novelist, playwright, director, Algerian essayist and journalist, originally from Aurès, Algeria.

Rebel against all powers, slayer of colonialism, imperialism and all fundamentalisms, Kateb Yacine died in France of leukemia, before Algeria fell into bloodshed. Violence and death, from another era, are at the origin of his work. On May 8, 1949, in Sétif, the demonstration against colonialism degenerated, Kateb Yacine found himself, at the age of 20, under piles of corpses: the French army and the police were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, 40,000 according to some.

Imprisoned, Kateb will learn that fourteen members of his family have been shot and that his mother, believing him dead, has gone crazy. Violence and death, from one era to another, are indeed perpetuated. "Everything came out of prison and love, the two sources of the work." Kateb Yacine has always put his finger on the wounds. He wanted to transform the world. "I am Algerian by my ancestors, internationalist by my century". "Neither Muslim, nor Arab, but Algerian." At the heart of the history of Algeria and its convulsions, the work of Kateb Yacine remains burning today. His real name is Mohammed Khellouti, from an old tribe of scholars, he chose Kateb - "writer" in Arabic - and with: ironically, Yacine, because the colonial administration called the natives by their surname followed by of their first name.

Poet, novelist, playwright, Kateb Yacine uses language as a weapon. His novels, Nedjma, Le Polygone étoilé are considered the founders of modern Algerian literature. Fragments, buddings, variants, bursting of traditional narration, they are disconcerting by their innovative structure (late 1950s) and by their poetic density. Enigmatic and emblematic books where mythical Algeria meets contemporary Algeria. The betrayal of the fathers is the origin of wandering.

https://data.bnf.fr/fr/11930322/yacine_kateb/

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