Rachid Boudjedra in conversation with Souad Hadj-Ali
First season of Literary Conversations:
Rachid Boudjedra in conversation with Souad Hadj-Ali.
Date: 18 April 2015.
Venue: Granada Book Fair Central Space.
Sponsorship: EEA Grants and Centro Federico García Lorca Consortium.
Partner: Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo.
Rachid Boudjedra (b. Ain-Belda, Argelia, 1941) is one of Algeria’s most important intellectuals, fiction writers and poets. He was expelled from the communist party, although years later he was a member of the National Liberation Front, representing the movement in Spain. He has been forced to live in exile because of his defence of human rights. His first and most famous novel, La Répudiation (1972; translated into Spanish, as El repudio, by Emecé in 2001), was banned in Algeria for 14 years. He has written fifteen novels, some of which are unforgettable, such as como Las mil y una noches de la nostalgia, La insolación, El desmantelamiento, La lluvia, and also Topographie idéale pour une agression caracterisée (1975), L’escargot enteté (1977) (published in Spanish, as El caracol, by Cabaret Voltaire in 2012) , Le désordre des choses (1991), Timimoum (1994) and Les figuiers de barbarie (2010; published in Spanish, as Los campos de chumberas, by Alianza Editorial in 2014) . Always critical of the political, social and literary situation and human conditions in Algeria, hios most recent work is titled Le FIS de la haine (Islamic Salvation Front of Hate). He has been translated into 30 languages.
Souad Hadj-Ali (b. Algeria, 1955) taught Spanish language and translating at the University of Algiers between 1982 and 1993. After spending 18 months in Tunisia, she moved to Madrid, where she has been living for 20 years with her family. She wrote Cronología de mi dolor por Argelia y otros relatos contra el olvido (Almería, Editorial Anubis, 2010); edited El ritual de la boqala: Poesía oral femenina argelina (Madrid, Cantarabia, 2011); and translated Images d’Amérique by the Chilean–Algerian writer Adriana Lassel (Enap Editions, 1992) and El caracol obstinado by Rachid Boudjedra (Cabaret Voltaire, 2012).
