Mouloud Feraoun
Feraoun, Mouloud
(pen name of Aït Chaábane). Born Mar. 8, 1913, in Tizi-Hibel; died Mar. 15, 1962, in El-Biar, a district of Algiers. Algerian writer who wrote in French.
Feraoun’s father was a Kabyle fellah who worked for many years as a miner in France. Feraoun graduated from a lycée in Tizi-Ousou and a pedagogical school in Bou-Zareah. From 1935 to 1957 he taught in Kabylie.
Feraoun was the founder of the realistic school of Algerian French-language literature. He wrote the novel Poor Man’s Son (1950; Russian translation, 1963), the short-story collection Days of Kabylie (1954; Russian translation, 1970), and a two-volume epic consisting of Land and Blood (1953; Russian translation, 1965) and Hard Path (1957; Russian translation, 1965). These works portray typical Algerian characters and the social conditions in the period between the two world wars and on the eve of the November Uprising of 1954.
In the article “The Last Message” (1960), Feraoun rejected the assimilationist solution to the Algerian problem suggested by A. Camus. He believed that the road to Algeria’s freedom and independence lay in an armed popular struggle against the colonialists (Diary: 1955–1962, 1962).
Feraoun was killed by OAS terrorists. In 1972 his essays, critiques, and excerpts from the unfinished novel The Anniversary were published.
WORKS
Les Poèmes de Si Mohand. Paris, 1960.Lettre à ses amis. Paris, 1969.
In Russian translation:
Dnevnik: 1955–1962. [Excerpts.] In Pisatel’ i sovremennost’. Moscow, 1973.
REFERENCES
Prozhogina, S. V. Frankoiazychnaia literatura stran Magriba. Moscow, 1973. (See index.)Khatibi, A. Le Roman maghrébin. Paris, 1968.
Dejeux, J. La Littérature maghrébine d’expression française, vol. 1. Algiers, 1970.
V. P. BALASHOV