Maghrebian Mosaic: A Literature in Transition (review)

Mildred Mortimer compares the Maghreb to a mosaic surface embellished with a myriad of colorful tiles grouted together to form a central image. Her selection of essays that piece together the fragments of cultural, political, and social difference in the region as well as highlight what the texts of Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan authors have in common aptly reflects this guiding metaphor.

Articles in the first section of this collection deal with the evolution of a sense of identity, as expressed by seminal authors from the Maghreb, from the 1950s under colonialism through the battles for independence and the rise of nationalism until its inevitable clash with postmodernism. The failure of nationalism to solve social problems is compounded by the more recent current of globalization that challenges anew the formation of personal and collective identities. Its writers, such as Abdelkébir Khatibi, find that "the challenge of postmodernism is to find a balance between past and present, personal freedom and collective good, and cultural specificity and openness to the world" (6).

The second group of essays analyzes texts by Mohammed Dib, Albert Camus, Mustapha Tlili, Brick Oussaid, Malika Mokeddem, and Tahar Ben Jelloun to explore "the geography of identity," in short, how environment is integrated into one's personality and, conversely, how the lack of a sense of place leaves a void in an individual's and a community's sense of belonging. The desert, normally conceived of as barren by those who are not familiar with it, furnishes these authors with a rich landscape of memories and inspiration.

"Women's Voice, Women's Vision" combines essays on Assia Djebar and Malika Mokeddem from Algeria, and Hélé Béji, Emna Bel Haj Yahia, Aza Filali, and Alia Mabrouk from Tunisia that document how Maghrebian women's resistance writing has evolved with the politics of the various nations. North African women have been barred from equality both by the French government, as were their male counterparts during colonization, and by patriarchal oppression due to religious tradition and the more recent return to Islamic fanaticism. Djebar, with her films and short stories that mingle narration, song, and poetry, and Mokeddem, in her evocation of the desert and the ocean as both real and surreal, often transcend genre as well as gender barriers in their resistance, while the others write about the somewhat easier time Tunisian women have had in integrating traditional and modern values and lifestyles.

The last subdivision of the study documents the rise of the Beur novel as second-generation North African immigrants address social and political issues that control their identities in France. It is typical that the first generation of immigrants would mourn the loss of Maghrebian traditions, but the work of the Beur writers contains the promise that a potential exists for them to transform France into a homeland where plurality and multiculturalism will be tolerated and ultimately welcomed.

Lucy Stone McNeece's essay on Abdelkébir Khatibi crystallizes, in the clearest of terms, the theme of this anthology as it distills the role of the francophone author and intellectual in a world that has moved beyond the postcolonial era and into the twenty-first century. In rescripting modernity the author must "mediate between the dissonant voices and disparate spaces of contemporary culture [. . .]" (84), in order to establish a dialogue between East and West.

As editor, Mildred Mortimer is to be congratulated for this excellent collection of essays. Her own chapter on Assia Djebar as well as the introduction and the conclusion to the text are highly readable and coherent. The theoretical basis for one article is somewhat difficult to follow, and two others do not quite measure up to the quality of the rest. However, the value of this volume as a whole is that the contributors approach the subject from diverse perspectives: historical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological. Therefore, their essays create...