Kateb Yacine

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Yacine, Kateb (1929–89), Algerian novelist and dramatist, whose plays are inspired by the struggle of the Algerian people against French colonial oppression and against their own internecine difficulties. His first play Le Cadavre encerclé (1958) had to be performed in Brussels because of the political situation in France. Together with a comic parable, La Poudre d'intelligence, and its sequel, Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité—presented under the title La Femme sauvage (1967)—it forms a trilogy published as Le Cercle des représailles. L' Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc (The Man with Rubber Sandals, 1971), an epic account of the life of Ho-ChiMinh, caused a political storm in Lyons, where the Théâtre du VIlle had its subsidy cut by the town council. Although Yacine represents strikingly the massacres and tortures perpetrated by the French army, his plays are pitched on a less political and more personal level than the attitude of the authorities might suggest. Mohamed, prends ta valise (1972), a comic satire on the situation of immigrant workers in France, was successfully presented to Algerian communities in Paris by an Algerian company. Like La Guerre de 2,000 ans (1975), it is in Arab dialect. In 1988 the Avignon Festival staged his last work, Le Bourgeois sans culotte; ou, Le Spectre du parc Monceau, about Robespierre.

Kateb Yacine , 1929–89, Algerian author. In 1945 he moved to Paris and afterward traveled in Europe and Asia. His most famous work is the novel Nedjma (1957, tr. 1961, new tr. 1991), a symbolic story of the love of four men for one woman. The work is notable for its carefully constructed, multilevel plot. His other books include a volume of poetry, Soliloquies (1946); the novel La Polygone Étoile (1966); and two anthologies of plays, Le cercle des représailles (1959) and L'Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc (1970).

Bibliography: See studies by I. C. Tcheho (1980), B. Aresu (1993), and K. Salhi (1999).