"Algerian novelist Kateb Yacine was at the center of the Algerian revolution as a teenager. As an upper class Algerian with both Qur’anic and French colonial education he embodied the cultural quandary of the évolué: native Arabs afforded the best of the mission civilisatrice and caught between two cultures. His mother also suffered from serious mental illness and was repeatedly hospitalized for years, including an extended stay at Blida psychiatric hospital. In various fictional guises, she becomes a recurring trope in Yacine’s work of the pathogenic effects of colonial and psychiatric violence. (...)"
Vernon A. Rosario
University of California, Los Angeles
H-France Review Vol. 8 (January 2008), No. 7
University of California, Los Angeles
H-France Review Vol. 8 (January 2008), No. 7
