Overview

Francophone literature from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) is quite distinctive in both its tone and its preoccupations. It emerged as a literature of decolonisation in the post-1945 period when, for the first time, indigenous Maghrebi writers began to publish their work in significant numbers. The texts written in French by writers such as Driss Chraïbi, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri, Kateb Yacine, and Albert Memmi that began to appear in the early 1950s marked themselves off from earlier writings in French by their preoccupation with a broadly postcolonial agenda. At first glance it might seem paradoxical to use the word ‘postcolonial’ here since Tunisia and Morocco did not gain independence until March 1956 while Algeria, in the early 1950s, was about to embark upon a traumatic war with France that would not end until 1962. The apparent anachronism disappears, however, if we accept the now widely held view that the hyphenated ‘post-colonial’ is a term referring to the historical period following a period of colonial rule, while the unhyphenated ‘postcolonial’ is used to refer to a critical interrogation of colonial relationships and their aftermath. So, naturally, the critique of colonial society and colonial relationships can begin and be expressed in works of literature before colonial rule has effectively come to an end. Elleke Boehmer has formulated this idea succinctly: ‘Rather than simply being the writing which “came after” empire, postcolonial literature is that which critically scrutinises the colonial relationship.