In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean by Edwige Tamalet Talbayev
  • Priscilla Charrat Nelson
Talbayev, Edwige Tamalet. The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean. Fordham UP, 2017. ISBN 978-0-8232-7516-8. Pp. 272.

While Maghrebi literature is an established field, and Mediterranean studies has been growing within academia, the strength of this book is that it does not start at [End Page 237] decolonization, but rather distinguishes itself from other publications by highlighting the pluralism of precolonial Maghreb including Amazigh, Turkish, and Roman identities as well as the more canonical inclusion of French and Arab history. Talbayev's work also departs from other academic inquiries on the transnational Maghreb that tend to focus solely on migrations from North Africa to Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, this book examines the Francophone Maghreb's literary production and offers a revised corpus of cultural heritages beyond expected divisions such as North versus South, Europe versus Africa, Judeo-Christianity versus Islam, ex-colony versus ex-metropole. Rooting her analyses in specific literary works, Talbayev avoids any vague claim about transnational relations in the region. For example, she offers an analysis of Kateb Yacine's Nedjma as an allegory of Algeria's quests for origins that escapes the double bind of colonial French identity (which the author identifies in Camus's L'étranger) and precolonial Arabic identity hailed by post-independence nationalists, and instead offers a national text that "performs a preemptive suspension of monological myth" (77). Talbayev also deconstructs the myth of Al-Andalus as transnational, transconfessional convivencia (living together) while recognizing its symbolic potentiality for minorities in unifying nationalist discourses post independence. When focusing on Malika Mokeddem's novel N'zid, Talbayev uses the amnesic protagonist's Mediterranean nomadism as rebuttal of fixed cultural belongings and monolithic identities. Another part of the book nuances this advocacy of nomadism by highlighting the reality of clandestine migration from North Africa to Europe triggered by poverty and disenfranchisement. This last chapter resonates with research done on the Mediterranean that bridges migration studies and ecocriticism. Throughout her book, Talbayev paints the Maghreb as a complex mosaic, made of cultural exchanges but also of "disharmony and unaligned identities" (104). Although it is somewhat unfair to ask a work about the Maghreb to also inquire about the Mashreq, the introduction to The Transcontinental Maghreb leaves the reader wanting to read more about the author's take on historical and literary connections between Francophone North Africa and the Francophone Mediterranean Middle East. Together with the author's revaluation of precolonial and colonial cultural diversity in the Maghreb, it is the author's voice, which does not shy away from difficult issues such as democratic failures in post-independence Morocco and Algeria (162) or the economic despair of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean, that sets Talbayev's research apart from other publications in Maghrebi studies. [End Page 238]

Priscilla Charrat Nelson
Bradley University (IL)
...

pdf

Share