Je n’ai qu’une langue, ce n’est pas la mienne: des écrivains à l’épreuve par Kaoutar Harchi (review)

an overview of Beauvoir’s eventful life in both private and public spheres, her interaction with other notable figures of the century, her passionate engagement in a range of social and political issues, or the diverse nature of her own body of work. True to his word, Fort gives voice throughout to Beauvoir herself. That is especially evident early on, as he draws on successive volumes of her memoirs, from Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958) to Tout compte fait (1972), to retrace her childhood and adolescence, the broad lines of her intellectual development, and the initial stages of her professional life. Fort’s treatment of her oeuvre is essentially descriptive, rather than critical. After noting the mixed reception of L’invitée (1943), her first published novel, he documents the acclaim accorded to Les mandarins, for which she received the prix Goncourt in 1954. He underscores the impact of Le deuxième sexe (1949), which made Beauvoir a“pionnière du féminisme contemporain dans l’imaginaire collectif”(155), while fostering her image, in some quarters, as a scandalous figure; a more appropriate adjective, Fort suggests, would be “revolutionary,” given her characteristic manner of looking at issues “avec un regard neuf, affranchi du poids des constructions préexistantes , un regard en mouvement, curieux et réflexif”(169). The appearance of La vieillesse (1970), two decades later, confirmed Beauvoir’s willingness to take up topics that had previously drawn relatively little attention. Among her writings of a more personal tenor, Fort highlights two “textes de deuil” (108), albeit very different in nature: Une mort très douce (1964)—“Réflexion sur la mort, mais également sur les relations mère/fille (et les malentendus qui les séparèrent)” (109)—and La cérémonie des adieux (1981), her moving tribute to Sartre.At the end, Fort provides an annotated list of Beauvoir’s writings and a good critical bibliography. Anyone in search of an indepth biography or a more critically oriented assessment of Beauvoir’s work will find the treatment here rather brief and general. By the same token, however, Fort’s book, clearly organized and written in an engaging, enthusiastic style, provides an excellent introduction to the life and work of an individual who had a profound impact on her century; in that respect, it is well suited to achieve the objective he articulates at the outset: “faire entrer dans la ronde beauvoirienne de nouveaux lecteurs” (7). University of Kansas John T. Booker Harchi, Kaoutar. Je n’ai qu’une langue, ce n’est pas la mienne: des écrivains à l’épreuve. Paris: Pauvert, 2016. ISBN 978-2-720-21549-0. Pp. 304. Kaoutar Harchi takes her title from a phrase in Jacques Derrida’s Le monolinguisme de l’autre, in which the philosopher “interroge longuement son rapport à la langue française”(51). The situation that Derrida describes of having the French language as his first language but as not really a language that belongs to him, because of his Jewish and Algerian origins, is a situation that Harchi sees as similar to that of Algerian writers 256 FRENCH REVIEW 91.4 Reviews 257 who write in French. In a work of literary sociology, she examines both the sociological context and the literary output and reputation of five Algerian writers: Kateb Yacine (1929–89), Assia Djebar (1936–2015), Rachid Boudjedra (1941–), Kamel Daoud (1970–), and Boualem Sansal (1949–). Roughly contemporaries, these authors have all lived through distinct periods of Algerian history, particularly in regard to FrancoAlgerian relations. Harchi’s overriding thesis is that all of them have been recognized not so much for literary merits, as a French writer would be, but more for their representation of French-language Algerian literature. Harchi discusses the incorporation of Yacine’s work into the repertoire of the Comédie-Française but points out that, as opposed to the French playwrights in the repertoire,Yacine did not have his best work included but rather a collection of his writing that the organizers considered as representative of Algeria. In regard to Djebar, Harchi examines her inclusion in the Académie française—a seemingly revolutionary step for the traditional institution...