Tlemcen or Places of Writing

by Mohammed Dib

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Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Translated from the French by Guy Bennett. TLEMCEN OR PLACES OF WRITING is an unusual, hybrid work: part memoir of the author's coming of age and coming to writing in his native Algeria, and part meditation on the nature of writing itself as well as on the task and responsibility of the writer. The text is complimented by some fifty photographs taken by the author in the Tlemcen of his youth, images of a past that has vanished and which the text seeks to reveal. The original French edition of this work was awarded the Grand prix de la Francophonie de l'Académie française on its publication in 1994.… (more)

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A very beautiful book, with charming photographs, and a pretty effective example of what nostalgia feels like. Tlemcen is one of the rare books that can be read in an hour for pleasure (nice but sad story about what has been lost of one man's home as an adolescent), but also subjected to all kinds of high-falutin' literary and philosophical analysis about the impact of one's surroundings on one's self and art. (

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stillatim | Oct 23, 2020 |

Evocative brief memoir of writing or becoming a writer: how one begins. In Dib's case at a table in an Algerian courtyard, at the "center of the house." Writing's genesis in place. Childhood also as a place. Lost to memory. Recalled to the page as story, as ambiance. The first writing table almost a public space, at the heart(h) of the home. The writer's task revealed, yet concealed in plain view. As he is teased and talked about, yet permitted his transgressive acts of description, interpretation & fabulation. The author's black and white photos from 1946 accompany the text. (

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Paulagraph | May 25, 2014 |

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Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Translated from the French by Guy Bennett. TLEMCEN OR PLACES OF WRITING is an unusual, hybrid work: part memoir of the author's coming of age and coming to writing in his native Algeria, and part meditation on the nature of writing itself as well as on the task and responsibility of the writer. The text is complimented by some fifty photographs taken by the author in the Tlemcen of his youth, images of a past that has vanished and which the text seeks to reveal. The original French edition of this work was awarded the Grand prix de la Francophonie de l'Académie française on its publication in 1994.

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