Berber Spider: Tahar Djaout, Arachne, and the Afterlife of Oral Poetics

Tahar Djaout was one of Algeria's most exciting young writers when he was gunned down in a suburb of Algiers in 1993. Although his novels have since been the subject of critical attention in Algeria, France, and beyond, little attention has been paid to his poetry, despite evidence to suggest that it was his activity as poet that was most important to him. This paper examines Les Vigiles (1991), Djaout's last novel, for what it reveals about modern Algerian literature and its relation to Berber oral traditions, before reading a cycle from his first collection of poems, Solstice barbelé (1975).