A sentimental education with Mohammed Aïssaoui
Audio 03:54
Mohammed Aïssaoui is a journalist for Le Figaro littéraire, but he is also a novelist and essayist.
In 2021, he published his first novel Les funambules, published by Gallimard.
© Photo F. Mantovani COUL 11 05.20
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
12 mins
Journalist at
Le Figaro littéraire
, Mohammed Aïssaoui is above all a novelist and essayist.
He became known by publishing
L'affaire de l'esclave Furcy
, a historical essay on slavery, crowned with the Renaudot Essay Prize 2010. Ten years later, he published his first fictional work
Les funambules
.
This novel, which marked the literary re-entry 2020, gives to read a fictional story dedicated to the most disadvantaged, with in watermark the author's own journey between native Algeria and France where he grew up and realized his dream of becoming writer.
Publicity
In
Les funambules
, the beautiful first novel by Mohammed Aïssaoui, one of the characters, asks the narrator: “
Why write in front of so many great writers?
Chantal, the character in question, who is doing a thesis on the work of Nobel Prize for Literature Patrick Modiano, is torn by the irrepressible desire to embark on writing herself. She hesitates, because she wonders if everything hasn't already been written. Can we still talk about love in an innovative way after Shakespeare, Racine, Stendhal, Duras and so many others, she wonders? The answer is bursting, a response worthy of the best manuals of creative writing: “
We don't write face-to-face, Chantal, but perhaps with everything these authors bring us.
"
“Writing with
”, Mohammed Aïssaoui made it the very foundation of his poetic art, which is characterized by its subtle balance between tradition and innovation.
His novel,
Les funambules,
is a striking example.
This book tells the story of a poignant quest for childhood and the past, coupled with a tribute to the great French and Francophone literature, the discovery of which allowed the author to become the writer he dreamed of. to be since his adolescence.
This gives a story of great compositional intelligence, deeply literary, summoning Aragon, Eluard, Camus, Breton, but also Kateb Yacine, emblematic figure of Algerian letters.
It is not insignificant that the self-fictional narrator of the novel is named Kateb, which means "to
write
" in Arabic.
Republican school child
Originally from the Maghreb, Mohammed Aïssaoui left his native Algeria at the age of eight, fleeing poverty and hunger.
It was in France, where he settled in 1964 with his mother, who could neither read nor write, but who had high ambitions for her son, that he began to learn French.
The taste for writing came by discovering, at school, the classics of literature from France and all over the world.
He was captivated, even if the first years he did not understand a word of what he was reading, as he says in the pages of his novel: "
I was twelve years old. I discovered a language that was not mine. A foreign language. I was starting to feel comfortable there, to love it, to play with it. I read Aragon, Eluard, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Camus, Breton, Steinbeck, Maupassant. I did not understand everything, far from it, but I was captivated. Nadja was a lost big sister. I was looking for The Stranger - like me - mentioned in the pages of Camus, and I couldn't find him. But in Camus, I found a father who spoke to me and understood me, who always keeps me company. […] The poems of Aragon and Eluard made me stronger and more fragile. Maupassant kindly made me believe that literature was a simple thing, that a reader asks only that ...
"
Mohammed Aïssaoui does not miss the slightest opportunity to recall that he is a pure product of the school of the Republic. He thanks his teachers for having supported him throughout his schooling and the French State for allowing him to benefit from scholarships to be able to pursue higher studies, "
so far removed from the family culture
". Even further away was literary journalism, the profession he chose after graduating from college. Journalist at
Le Figaro littéraire
since 2004, Aïssaoui is today a respected pen on the Place de Paris both for his chronicles on literature and his portraits of writers.
The transition from journalistic writing to writing itself is done more laboriously, even if the person concerned had understood very early, according to his statements, that he would always write. Mohammed Aïssaoui's first published book is an anthology of writers' texts on the city of Algiers, bringing together European voices (Dumas, Montherlant, Camus, Sénac) and Algerian voices (Maïssa Bey, Kateb Yacine, Fellag ...) ( 1).
But it was in 2010, by publishing his second book, devoted to a little-known episode of the fight against slavery, that he became known to the general public. Several times reprinted and winner of numerous prizes (historical novel prize, literary creation grant from the Académie française, RFO book prize, Renaudot prize for essay, Afro-Caribbean trophies),
L'affaire de l'esclave Furcy
(2) had both popular and esteemed success, telling the story of a slave from Reunion, in the 19th century, who sued his master and succeeded in obtaining his freedom after 26 years of legal proceedings and many twists and turns. For the author, the exceptional success of his essay can be explained by the fact that “
slavery is told from a human level, in all its complexity.
Moreover, what makes the originality of this story is that it features a slave trying to break his chains by bringing his master to justice.
This aspect put forward is perhaps not foreign to the interest which the book arouses.
"
Despite this remarkable success of his essay, the author of
L'affaire de l'esclave Furcy would
have to wait another ten years
for him to decide to take the plunge, by writing
Les Funambules
, a deeply personal novel. (3).
“
Literature is not a simple thing, contrary to what Maupassant taught me, especially when fiction is a medium for talking about oneself,
” says Mohammed Aïssaoui.
Biographer for anonymous
When it was released,
Les funambules
was for a time in contention for the Prix Goncourt and the Renaudot, the two most prestigious French literary prizes. It will ultimately be excluded from both selections, but the novel nonetheless remains, according to many critics, one of the strongest and most successful books of recent years.
The strength of this novel lies in its happy blend of the fictional and the personal. Here, through the journey of a narrator-character from immigration, Aïssaoui stages his own past, between precariousness and promises. The author's double, Kateb, is also a writer. Young in his thirties, the man wants to be a “
biographer for anonymous
”. It collects the stories of the homeless, the destitute, the neglected, but also those of the volunteers of charitable associations such as Les Restos du cœur, ATD Quart-monde, the Little Brother of the Poor or the Collective Les Morts de la rue.
The stories of these dented life and their guardian angels structure the book of Mohammed Aïssaoui, several chapters of which are named after the first names of the people interviewed by the author as part of this true novel-report. These mixed stories, made of drifts, cracks and testimonies of kindness, constitute the vibrant heart of this opus as poetic as it is modest.
There is something about the
Thousand and One Nights
in this novel which reveals a multitude of destinies, captured to the heart. In the background, the sentimental quest of the central character to find Nadia, his love of youth.
“The tightrope walkers,”
explains the author
, “is the story of someone who did not know how to say 'I love you' and he suffers from it. This happens to a lot of people and especially to young people with an immigrant background, because the language and the culture make communication more complex for them. If there is a quest from Nadia sixteen years later, it's because Kateb thinks she can tell her that he loved it, but hasn't been able to tell her. This inability to express feelings reveals a deep crack in a person whose job is to write. "
We do not come out unscathed from these pages where social realism à la Zola mingles with the confusion of feelings and existential despair, material the author uses brilliantly to draw the outlines of the abysses that lie in wait for us.
(1) “Le Petit Mercure”, Mercure de France, 136 pages, 5.40 euros
(2) Folio n ° 5275, 2010, 222 pages, 6.90 euros
(3) Gallimard, 2020, 21 pages, 18 euros.
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