kateb yacine english biography

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Remembering Algerian novelist Kateb Yacine: An eternal captive to his idea of life

Algerian writer Kateb Yacine transformed francophone literature but never saw himself as a novelist. Best known to Arabs for a translation from French, he preferred his plays in the language of the people.

Kateb Yacine is best known in Arab literary history for his masterpiece Nedjma.

The novel was originally published in French in 1956. Since then, multiple Arabic translations have followed without ever capturing the elusive essence of the original. It means his reputation among readers in the Arab world does not fully reflect the depth and range of a challenging and revolutionary writer.

The famous novel brought Yacine international recognition in the late 1950s, but it was merely a brief stop in his creative journey. Yacine never saw himself as a novelist and only wrote two in a career that spanned decades. In his later work, poetry and theatre took centre stage.

Contrary to his reputation in the Arab world, Kateb Yacine is recognised in the West foremost as a poet, playwright, investigative journalist, and skilled political writer.

His poetry – particularly his plays – earned him a global reputation, finding a place among the classics of modern literature. Yacine was hailed among the great writers of the 20th century.

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Kateb Yacine's poetry – particularly his plays – earned him a global reputation, finding a place among the classics of modern literature. Yacine was hailed among the great writers of the 20th century. 

A revolutionary novel

The Arab audience is only familiar with a sliver of his works, most notably Nedjma , via translations erroneously believed to resemble the original closely.

The novel revolutionised Francophone storytelling. Its Algerian author left an indelible mark on contemporary French literature, which, for many decades, had looked down on works written in French by non-French people.

However, the Arabic translations never produced an exact parallel of the book. They failed to capture its core and the ideological and philosophical references it included by no fault of the translators. The novel's inherent complexity is impossible to capture.

Critics have agreed that Nedjma is a novel whose depths cannot be replicated, with perhaps even the author unable to explore the multiple layers of interpretation fully.

Dr Saeed Boutagine, the author of the latest and most meticulous translation, described the book as offering various linguistic, lexical, and stylistic possibilities that ultimately prove to be merely theoretical approaches, failing to achieve their intended purpose. 

And so the Arab world has much to discover in the works of this great writer.

Nedjma revolutionised Francophone storytelling. Its Algerian author left an indelible mark on contemporary French literature, which, for many decades, had looked down on works written in French by non-French people.

Two reputations

The West's image of Yacine is a more accurate portrayal. It does not reduce his career to a single novel, even though Nedjma was widely acclaimed, nor does it confine him to the label of "novelist," which he had rejected, considering himself primarily a poet and dramatist.

While Nedjma was a significant milestone in Yacine's literary journey and solidified his position in Algerian and Arab literature, his true significance as a writer is that he broke new ground in Francophone literature, whether through poetry, theatre, or novels.

By introducing a new form and writing style, Yacine became the undisputed pioneer of contemporary Algerian literature. It is a title only Mohammed Dib may contest. And no one comes close to Yacine's status as the true innovator of Algerian novels written in French. 

No poetry without chaos 

Arab readers are not familiar with Yacine's poetry because of a lack of translations. Publishers also failed to get his political and intellectual articles into Arabic, which could have portrayed him in a more positive light.

In the early 1980s, Yacine was frequently portrayed as an irreligious and antagonistic towards Islam. He was dismissed the Arabic language as primitive, accusations that he often ridiculed in his published interviews. 

Yacine was a rebellious and revolutionary poet in both his themes and writing methods, unafraid to tackle taboos, particularly political ones. This fearlessness caused him problems, some of which were serious, but that did not stop him from speaking his mind. 

He believed that poets stand out not just through the quality of their poetry and the originality of their subjects but also because of their personality. He sought a unique blend of courage, recklessness, and awareness.

In his eyes, poets need not be concerned with knowing and respecting boundaries but rather with what the ideas being pursued in their work demand of them. As long as they continue to believe in the value of poetry, they remain perpetually bound to their ideas. 

In a conversation published in the book The Poet as a Boxer, which collects Yacine's interviews from 1959 to 1989, he made this clear to the French theatre director and actor Jean-Marie Ciro:

"Even within the progressive movement, the authentic poet must articulate his dissent and different views. If he fails to do so fully, he will suffocate. His job is to create his own revolution within the political revolution, as he is the perpetual generator of chaos amidst any upheaval." 

Yacine had his own poetic dictionary, which he claimed was the result of the inner rebellion found in the mind and heart of any poet who believes in his work and his art form and their refusal to conform to tribal and other imposed norms.

He believed that the poet's tragedy is to be used in the service of a revolutionary struggle, which cannot and should not align with trivial matters. He saw the poet as the pure essence of revolution and life. 

In search of identity

Perhaps his instability throughout his life stemmed from his sense of being different and his constant quest to understand his identity as a poet and an Algerian revolutionary.

Despite growing up in a poor family in eastern Algeria to illiterate and apolitical parents, he still sought out opportunities to learn French. Though he became more proficient in the language than most native speakers themselves, he would deliberately speak with an accent to assert his own identity.

His apolitical upbringing did not stop him from joining Algerian groups fighting for independence or taking part in political activities and protests against the French occupation, including the 8 May 1945 demonstrations in the city of Constantine, which claimed the lives of 45,000 people. He was later arrested in Setif and imprisoned for a few months.

That same year, his mother's mental illness caused her to lose touch with reality, robbing him of the woman who had introduced him to poetry in his youth. By the end of that eventful year, he fell in love with Zuleikha, the muse for Nedjma.

Kateb Yacine experienced a life of exile and alienation. He was exiled from Algeria by the French authorities in 1951 and did not return until after the Declaration of Independence. Yet he soon left again due to feeling estranged in his homeland. "I felt as if I had come from Mars," he said.

He then embarked on a new adventure that took him to Russia, Vietnam, Syria, Egypt, and the United States.

While at the peak of his literary success, he made the unexpected decision to return to Algeria for good – and to stop writing in French. 

Leaving French behind 

Yacine's reasons to stop writing in French differed from those of his compatriot, Malek Haddad, who took the same decision.

Haddad believed that Arabic was more deserving of his genius than French, which he saw as the enemy's language. But he was not fluent in Arabic, and so it amounted to literary suicide. Haddad stopped writing altogether despite being considered the most influential writer of his generation and having a promising creative future.

In contrast, Yacine's decision to drop French was wise and forward-thinking. He remained committed to his eternal love: theatre. In 1970, he returned to Algeria to settle there permanently, informing his publishers that he would no longer write and focus on theatre instead.

Despite his reputation for bohemianism, indifference, and absurdity, Yacine believed that theatre was the most suitable art form for the era and the ideal tool for intellectuals to communicate their ideas to the world.

He considered it more effective than journalism, which he practised professionally, and more capable of reaching both hearts and minds than poetry. As for novels, he viewed them simply as a form of expression which, no matter how widely read, could not compare to the power of theatre so long as it was written in the vernacular.  

Yacine believed that theatre was the most suitable art form for the era and the ideal tool for intellectuals to communicate their ideas to the world. He considered it more effective than journalism, which he practised professionally and more capable of reaching both hearts and minds than poetry. 

Theatre as the voice of people 

Yacine was convinced that popular theatre should be the voice of the people. To that end, it needed to be written in their own, familiar language. To write a play in Standard Arabic or French was futile in his eyes.

And so, he embarked on a theatrical journey that lasted nearly two decades until his death. His most famous play, Muhammad, Pack Your Bag defined Algerian theatre. It was translated into French and later into Standard Arabic by Said Boutagine.

Unfortunately, unlike many of his other plays, including The Betrayed Palestine and The Man in the Rubber Sandals , it was not published. 

Yacine immersed himself in theatre, refusing any temptations to return to other forms of writing. He often scoffed at the suggestion that writing is synonymous with publishing works.

In one of his final interviews, when asked why he no longer wrote, he responded with irritation: "No one knows what happens between me and my typewriter. No one has the right to say that I do not write. I am still writing. If you entered my room, you would find thousands of papers scattered all over."

"The world knew me as a writer who wrote and published books in French, but after my return to Algeria, I wanted to work in the vernacular theatre, which also requires writing."

"The difference is I did not publish what I wrote. But I've written Muhammad, Pack Your Bag, The Thousand Year War, and Intelligence Powder. But instead of being published, these works were instead performed on stage and touched millions of spectators, most of whom could neither read nor write."

"I write these plays for myself, but they were performed on stage for them, for the illiterate audience and in their language. That is why I did not feel the need to publish any work during these years."

Yacine spent his days as a captive to his idea of life, which he thought could only be defined by chaos and could only come together through fragmentation.

It seemed as if he was living out Nedjma in a cycle of incomplete events, a reality he had written with the intention of erasing it.

Whatever else, he could not erase the impact he had on this world. 

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Home » Algeria » Kateb Yacine

He was born in Constantine in 1929. Though he had a religious upbringing, he was soon involved in Algerian politics. He became a journalist and travelled around the East before settling in France. Nedjma (Nedjma) was published during Algeria’s war of liberation with France and is probably the most famous Algerian novel. He returned to Algeria in 1963 but continued his travels, including visits to the Soviet Union and Hanoi. He wrote poetry, novels and plays and was director of a theatre company in Algeria. He died of leukemia in 1989.

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La Langue de Césaire: Plotting Aesthetic Production in French beyond the Métropole

A digital bilingual anthology of literature from africa and the caribbean.

• Frère d’âme (2018)
• L’Amour, la fantasia (1985)
• L’étrange destin de Wangrin (1973)
• Les trois parques (1997)
• Mendiants et orgueilleux (1955)
• Nedjma (1956)
• Une si longue lettre / So Long a Letter (1979)
• Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939)
• Aimé Césaire
• Albert Cossery
• Amadou Hampâté Bâ
• Assia Djebar

Kateb Yacine

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Algeria (1929–89)

Writes in french, algerian arabic.

Kateb Yacine is a central reference in Algerian and North African Literature, particularly famous for his avant-garde novel Nedjma  (1956) . Yacine was born in 1926 in Constantine,  in Eastern Algeria, into a family of poets and lawyers. He went to the traditional koranic school for a short time then was educated in the French colonial school. 8 May 1945 was a turning point in his life. Because of his participation in anticolonial protests, he was jailed, and his mother was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Expelled from high school, he bega nto publish poems, give talks, and work as a journalist for the newspaper  Alger républicain . After the death of his father in 1950, Yacine fled to France for a long exile. Subsisting on odd jobs, and reading modern novelists such as Joyce and Faulkner, he wrote his first play L e Cadavre encerclé  in 1953, then his most famous novel,  Nedjma,  in 1956. He traveled throughout Europe during the Algerian revolution (1954–1962), published a second novel, L e Polygone étoilé,  then returned to independent Algeria in 1970, where he led a popular theater group in Algerian Arabic. After his death in 1989, Kateb Yacine’s name has above all become associated with his novel  Nedjma , a text about love and revolt written in an innovative style and a complex structure.

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Kateb Yacine

• Born August 6 , 1929 · Constantine, French Algeria, now Algeria
• Died October 28 , 1989 · Grenoble, Isère, France (leukenia)
• Kateb Yacine was born on August 6, 1929 in Constantine, French Algeria, now Algeria. He was a writer, known for Poussière de Juillet (1967) , Nedjma (1963) and Déjà le sang de mai ensemençait novembre (1982) . He died on October 28, 1989 in Grenoble, Isère, France.

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Kateb Yacine: A Profile from the Archives

[ ”A Profile from the Archives“  is a series published by Jadaliyya in both Arabic and English in cooperation with the Lebanese newspaper, Assafir . These profiles will feature iconic figures who left indelible marks in the politics and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. This profile was originally published in Arabic and was translated by Mazen Hakeem.]

Name: Kateb

Last Name: Yacine

Date of Birth: 1929

Date of Death: 1989

Place of Birth: Smondo - Constantine

Wife’s Name: Zobaida Sharghi

Category: Writer

Profession: Playwright, novelist, and poet

Kateb Yacine  

• Algerian national.
• Born in a town called Smondo near Constantine on 6 August 1929.
• His birth name is Yacine and his last name is Kateb. He decided to flip them around and thus he came to be known as Kateb Yacine.
• His father was a lawyer.
• Married Zobaida Sharghi; he named his eldest son Amazeigh.
• Started writing poetry when he was eight years old.
• Went to a Qu`ran school for a short time before he started going to the French School in Setif where he was introduced to Nerval, Baudelaire, and Verlaine.
• Participated in Setif protests on 8 May 1945 against the French occupation before his sixteenth birthday. He was arrested in the demonstrations, detained at the central prison, and expelled from school.
• After his release from prison, he roamed in Algeria and its desert and wrote poetry. His first collection of poems Soliloquy, monajat , was published in 1946.
• Joined the Algerian Communist Party in 1947 and went on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1951.
• Left Algeria for France and between 1948 and 1951, he worked as a correspondent for Alger Républicain  (Algeria Republican) newspaper, which was established by the French writer Albert Camus.

[An interview in French, translated into English, in which Kateb Yacine criticizes the French writer Albert Camus and contrasts him with William Faulkner.]  

• Travelled to Europe in 1955 and met Bertolt Brecht. Left France for Italy and lived there for a period of time.
• He visited Vietnam twice, once in 1967 and then in 1970.
• Wrote novels, plays, and poems against the French occupation of Algeria and in defense of his nation’s cause. His most famous play was "The Enclosed Corpse" ( Le Cadavre encerclé ) which caused a stir in French cultural circles when it was released. He also published the novel A Star, Nedjma . Both novels alluded to Algeria and its suffering.
• Went back to Algeria in 1970 and stopped writing in French and started writing in vernacular Algerian. He established a theater group that performed his plays on stages in Algerian cities and European capitals. He used to say: “Just as I rebelled against the French Algeria, I rebel against the Arab Muslim Algeria. I am not Arab or Muslim. I am Algerian.”
• Awarded many literary awards including: Jean Amroush Award in Florence in 1963, the Lotus Award in 1975, and the Grand National Award for Literature in Paris.
• Died on 28 October 1989 at the age of sixty in Grenoble due to leukemia.  

Publications:

• A Poet is Like a Boxer, (Le Poète comme un boxeur), (journalistic interviews) 1944
• Abdelkader and the Algerian Independance, Abdelkader et l`indépendance algérienne , 1948
• Nedjma,  Nedjma,  1956.
• The Starry Polygon,  Le Polygone étoilé ,  1966.  
• Soliloquy, Soliloques , 1946.
• Poems for the Oppressed Algeria, qasa’id ila al-jaza’ir al-modhtahada , 1948.
• One Hundred Thousand Virgins, mi’et alf a’thraa , 1958.
• Under the Cries of the Rooster, tahta sarkhat al-deekah , 1956.
• The Circle of Reprisal,  Le Cercle des représailles , 1959
• The Enclosed Corpse, Le Cadavre encerclé , 1955.
• The Intelligence Powder, La Poudre d`intelligence , 1959.
• The Ancestors are Double The Ferocity, Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité , 1959.
• The Man with the Rubber Sandals, L`Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc , 1970.
• The Savage Woman, al-mar’a al-motawahisha , 1963.
• Muhammad: Carry Your Bag, Mohammed prends ta valise , 1971.
• The Butchery of Hope, Boucherie de l`espérance, 1971.
• Oanisa, 1972.
• Because It`s a Woman . Parce que c`est une femme , 1972
• The Two Thousand Year War, harb al-alfai sana , 1974.
• King of the West, malek al-gharb , 1977.
• Women’s Voice, sawt al-nisaa’ .
• The Deceived Palestine, falesteen al-makhdoo’
• Moses the Sweeper, mosa al-kannas .
• Nuggets of Creativity, shatharat ibdaa’ , 1986.  

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Kateb Yacine, Novelist And Poet, Is Dead at 60

• Oct. 31, 1989

Kateb Yacine, a leading Algerian novelist, poet and playwright, died of leukemia on Saturday in Grenoble, France. He was 60 years old.

Mr. Yacine died at La Tranche Hospital, where he had gone for treatment of his illness, the Algerian state news agency said.

Mr. Yacine, an active supporter of Algeria's war for independence from France in the 1950's, first became known for his novel ''Nedjma,'' an extended love poem to the title character, a woman who incarnates the Algerian revolution.

He wrote novels and poems in French, but since 1970 had written mainly for the theater. His best-known play was ''Mohammed, Get Your Suitcase,'' a story dealing with large-scale Algerian emigration to France.

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KATEB YACINE. SOLILOQUIES AND OTHER POEMS

2022, Kateb Yacine. Soliloquies and other poems (Laouari, Boukhalfa and Garratón Mateu, Carmen eds.) Boumerdès: Éditions Frantz Fanon

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• Yacine, Kateb (1929–89) in The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance
• Yacine, Kateb (26 August 1929) in The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre
• Yacine, Kateb (1929–89) in The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre (2 ed.)
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Kateb, Yacine 1929–1989 Algerian novelist, poet, and playwright whose most famous work, Nedjma, is considered the starting point of North African (or Maghreb) literature in French.  

Amina azza bekkat.

Yacine Kateb was born in 1929 in Condé Smendou, a small village in eastern Algeria that was under French rule ...

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