Nabile Farès

Nabile Farès was born in 1940 in Collo (Kabylie), Algeria, the son of Abdur Rahman Farès (President of the Algerian Assembly in the late 1950s, and imprisoned by first the French, then by Ben Bella, in the early 1960s). Nabile's reputation as a writer has outstripped that of his father; he now lives and writes in Paris, France (where he has worked as a psychoanalyst for many years).

Nabile Farès fought against the French towards the end of the war of independence (1960). Later he obtained his doctorate, in France, with a dissertation on the role of the Ogre in North African oral literature.

His first work is the novel Yahia, pas de chance, (1970), which evolved from a manuscript Farès carried in a knapsack while on the run in several periods during and after the war of independence^[1] Later works were both novels and poetry. Among these is the trilogy of novels: La Découverte du nouveau monde, and his greatest novel Un Passager de l'occident, which arises, in part, from Farès's friendship with the American writer James Baldwin.

All of Farès's work is characterized by political engagement, and particularly by a drive to expand the definition of Algeria and Algerianness—and to resist factional politics and identity politics^[2]. He evokes an Algeria that is always a work in progress, and leaves the reader to reflect that personal identity (along with national) is much the same. Exil is a constant theme^[3]. His poetry, in particular, is challenging and marked by visually striking inventiveness.

Works of Farès

• Yahia, pas de chance. Paris: le Seuil, 1970
• Le Champ d'Akli. Paris: P.J. Oswald, 1971
• Un Passager de l'occident. Paris: Le Seuil, 1971
• Le Champ des oliviers. Paris: Le Seuil, 1972
• Mémoire de l'absent. Paris: Le Seuil, 1974
• L'Exil et le désarroi. Paris: Maspero, 1976
• Chants d'histoire et de vie pour des roses de sable. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1978
• La Mort de Salah Baye. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1979
• L'Etat perdu. Paris: Actes/Sud, 1982
• L'Exil au féminin. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1987
• Hearing Your Story. New Orleans: U. New Orleans Press, 2008 (translation of Chants d'histoire et de vie pour des roses de sable)
• A Passenger From the West (novel). Translation by Peter Thompson. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2010

References

1. ^ Crisolenguas Vol. 1 no. 2
2. ^ Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations,Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 2003 p. 25
3. ^ Zemmouri, Dialectique de l'identité, Tanger: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique, 2007 p. 27

Persondata
Name	Farès, Nabile
Alternative names
Short description	Algerian writer
Date of birth	1940
Place of birth	Collo
Date of death
Place of death