On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death: Dead Certainties
by Antonie Ladan
Original title: Het Vanzelfzwijgende – Over psychoanalyse, desillusie en dood
Published by Routledge. London: 2014

“In this truly wonderful book, filled with clearly articulated wisdom and rich clinical illustration, Antonie Ladan presents invaluable observations about how effective psychoanalytic treatment works. … > Learn More

The Watchers, by Tahar Djaout.
Original title: Les Vigiles.
Published by Ruminator Books. St. Paul, Minnesota: 2002

Important now more than ever.
The Algerian author Tahar Djaout was assasinated by Islamic terrorists in 1993 for what was claimed to be “the effects of his fearsome pen”. During his short life, Djaout was regarded as one of Algeria’s best and most promising writers. … > Learn More

The Last Summer of Reason (Paperback), by Tahar Djaout
Republished by Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press.
Lincoln and London: 2007

Buy this book
One of the great blind spots of American intellectual life has been its failure to recognize and support Arab intellectuals living under various forms of totalitarianism. Algerian novelist, poet, and journalist Tahar Djaout, assassinated in 1993, is a case in point. … > Learn More

The Last Summer of Reason (Paperback), by Tahar Djaout
Republished by Bison Books,University of Nebraska Press.
Lincoln and London: 2007

The Watchers, by Tahar Djaout.
Original title: Les Vigiles.
Published by Ruminator Books. St. Paul, Minnesota: 2002

This review begins with a confession. When I first saw a copy of The Last Summer of Reason while browsing in a bookstore off Harvard Square, it wasn’t Tahar Djaout’s name that caught my eye, but the name of Wole Soyinka, who supplied the introduction to this short novel. … > Learn More

Algerian White, by Assia Djebar.
Co-translator: David Kelley
Original title: Le Blanc de l’Algérie.
Published by Seven Stories Press. New York, New York: 2001

Translated by Marjolijn de Jager & David Kelley “A hymn to friendship and the enduring power of language, [Algerian White] is also a requiem for a nation’s unfinished literature” – New York Times “Assia Djebar…has given weeping its words and longing its lyrics” – World Literature Today Weaving a tapestry of the epic and bloody ongoing struggle in Algeria between Islamic fundamentalism and the post-colonial civil society, Djebar describes with unerring accuracy and a ghostly presence the lives and deaths of those writers and intellectuals whose contributions were cut short. … > Learn More

Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War, by Assia Djebar
Original title: Les Enfants du nouveau monde.
Published by The Feminist Press at CUNY.
New York, New York: 2005

“Children of the New World,” the third novel by the Algerian writer Assia Djebar, was published in France in 1962, but Marjolijn de Jager’s lovely translation is its first appearance in English.  … > Learn More

The Amputated Memory by Werewere Liking;
Original title: La Mémoire Amputée
The Feminist Press, New York, New York: 2007
Translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager

Unremembered

After reading the last paragraph of Werewere Liking’s latest novel, I closed the cover and exclaimed, “Well!”  That’s not the most sophisticated response, but a more appropriate one for a tale that is, in a word, astonishing: visceral and lyrical, impudent and literate, straightforward but effortlessly and endlessly metaphorical.  … > Learn More

Paris Noir by Jean-Bernard Puay,
In paris noir, Auélien Masson (Ed.)
Published by Akashic Books.
New York, NY 10009: 2008

“The dank and sweaty crime scenes in Paris Noir (Akashic, paper, $15.95) testify to the fact that the French invented “noir.”  Among the jarring images in this story collection (astutely edited by Aurélien Masson and translated by David Ball, Nichole Ball, Carol Cosman and Marjolijn de Jager), Didier Daeninckx’s murky view of the after-hours scene in Porte Saint-Denis and Marc Villard’s gritty look at the sex trade in Les Halles are correctives to all those persistent romantic fantasies about the city.” … > Learn More