In The Land of Historic Grandeur Literary Littleness

Résumé

Even as everyone agrees to see the beginning of the end of history, a real craze
for the latter is building with vigor, especially among young writers of the post-independence
generations. Undoubtedly in need of themes carrying new meanings, perilous and
disinterested commitments, ambitions of constructive creativity and originality, valuing and
authentically written identity affirmations, lucid literary claims, some authors try to
question History, with, it must be admitted, of rickety means, both scriptural and thematic,
and even more, ideological. Kaouther Adimi, acclaimed author, occupied, for a certain time,
the plates of Western televisions, praised by all and all. In Des pierres dans mes poches, the
narrator is preoccupied with her situation as an old maid, and although she seems to have
succeeded, living on the other side of the Mediterranean, she still remains under the influence
of a cantankerous mother who reproaches him for not having been able to “settle down”. She must return, the time of her younger sister’s wedding, apprehends this reunion, and ends up
thinking like her mother.
Nos richesses, introduced several characters this time. Edmond Charlot, present-absent
character, relives, through completely fictitious notebooks or memoirs, in this bookstore he
created in Algiers in the 1930s. And makes the reader relive the dark hours of colonialism,
mixed with the current ones of the erosion of values which means that this bookstore which
displayed this revealing slogan according to which “A man who reads is worth two” is doomed
to become a store of donuts. Ryad, an Algerian student living in France, considers this
monstrous transformation as an internship, essential to his course, nothing more. And puts
out Abdallah, the manager of the place. The latter becomes homeless.