Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A Place in the Word
- 1 Life/Writing in the Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
- 2 Mouloud Feraoun: Life Story, Life-Writing, History
- 3 Albert Memmi: Fictions of Identity and the Quest for Truth
- 4 Abdelkébir Khatibi: The Deciphering of Memory and the Potential of Postcolonial Identity
- 5 Assia Djebar: History, Selfhood and the Possession of Knowledge
- Conclusion: A Place in the World
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Albert Memmi: Fictions of Identity and the Quest for Truth
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A Place in the Word
- 1 Life/Writing in the Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
- 2 Mouloud Feraoun: Life Story, Life-Writing, History
- 3 Albert Memmi: Fictions of Identity and the Quest for Truth
- 4 Abdelkébir Khatibi: The Deciphering of Memory and the Potential of Postcolonial Identity
- 5 Assia Djebar: History, Selfhood and the Possession of Knowledge
- Conclusion: A Place in the World
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chacun de mes livres aura été une étape d'un même itinéraire. J'aurai passé la majeure partie de ma vie à écrire. L'écriture m'a souvent servi de béquille; chacun a la sienne, de sorte que ma vie et mon travail se répondent; de sorte que parlant de l'une je parle de l'autre, et inversement. Toute oeuvre est plus ou moins autobiographique; mettons que la mienne l'est plus ouvertement que d'autres. L'autobiographie est, comme toute entreprise humaine, une tentative de dire quelque chose a quelqu'un. J'ai sans doute plus fortement besoin de m'expliquer, de plaider peut-être.
Albert Memmi, Le Nomade immobile(Each of my books will have been a stage on the same journey. I will have spent the greater part of my life writing. Writing has often served me as a crutch; everyone has their own, so that my life and my work correspond to each other, and in speaking of one I am speaking of the other, and vice versa. All literary work is more or less autobiographical; let's say that mine is more openly than some. Autobiography is, like every human undertaking, an attempt to say something to someone. Unquestionably, I have a stronger need to explain myself, to plead, perhaps.)
L'écrivain dit la vérité avec des mensonges successifs. La formule me paraît heureuse. A force d'ajouter fiction sur fiction, l'écrivain finit par dire presque la vérité.
Albert Memmi, Albert Memmi: Ecrivain et sociologue(The writer tells the truth through a succession of lies. I think that definition is a happy one. By adding fiction to fiction the writer ends up by telling something like the truth.)
The work of Albert Memmi, a Tunisian writer of Jewish origin, is wideranging both in breadth and in time, covering almost half a century of literary production and sociological study.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Autobiography and IndependenceSelf and Identity in North African Writing in French, pp. 131 - 204Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2003