Mohammed Dib

Mohammed Dib was born in 1920 in western Algeria in Tlemcen, a hometown to which he paid homage in his famous trilogy: La Grande Maison (1952), L’Incendie (1954) and Le Métier à tisser (1957). A schoolteacher for a time, then an accountant, translator, journalist at “Alger Républicain” and for the Communist Party organ “Liberté”, he was finally expelled from Algeria in 1959.

He settled in France and began his literary career. He was the first Maghreb writer to receive, in 1994, the Grand Prix de la Francophonie. And the one of whom Aragon said: “This man from a country that has nothing to do with the trees at my window, the rivers on my quays, the stones of our cathedrals, speaks with the words of Villon and Péguy”.

Grand Prix de la Francophonie of the Académie française, Grand Prix du roman de la Ville de Paris, Mohammed Dib was immediately recognized as a major novelist. Mohammed Dib received numerous awards for his work, including the Fénéon Prize in 1953 for his first novel La Grande maison, the René Laporte Prize in 1962 for the poetry collection Ombre gardienne, the Prize of the Association of French-Language Writers in 1977 for the novel Habel, and several prizes from the Académie française for poetry or novels.

In 1994, he received the Grand Prix de la Francophonie awarded by the Académie française, awarded for the first time to a Maghrebi writer; in 1998, the Mallarmé Prize was awarded to his poetry collection L'Enfant jazz and the Grand Prix du Roman de la Ville de Paris to his entire novelistic work; In 2001, the Prix des Découvreurs of the City of Boulogne/Mer rewarded his entire poetic work.

He died at his home in La Celles-Saint-Cloud on May 2, 2003, at the age of 83, leaving behind some of the most beautiful pages of Algerian literature.