Nabile Farès, Algerian-born French novelist, Died at 75

  Writer

Nabile Farès was born on September 25, 1940, and died on August 30, 2016.

He was an Algerian-born French novelist.

Nabile Farès was conceived in Collo, a part of Skikda Province, Algeria.

He was fighting against the French towards the end of the war of independence (1960).

Then, later he gained his doctorate, in France, with a dissertation on the role of the Ogre in North African oral literature.

Farès’s 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 Later works were both novels and poetry.

Along with 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.

His work can be 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.

In his writing he tries evoke 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.

Nabile Farès’s poetry, in particular, is challenging and marked by visually striking inventiveness.

He died in Paris.

Nabile Farès passed away at 75 years old.