{"id":9313,"date":"2012-11-13T08:45:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T12:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=9313"},"modified":"2012-11-11T20:03:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T00:03:03","slug":"nabile-fares-exile-and-helplessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/nabile-fares-exile-and-helplessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Nabile Far\u00e8s “Exile and Helplessness”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Exile and Helplessness<\/h3>\n

(L’Exil et le d\u00e9sarroi)<\/em><\/h3>\n

Nabile Far\u00e8s
\nTranslated by Peter Thompson<\/h4>\n

ISBN 978-1935084181
\n140 pages: $15.00
\nOctober, 2012<\/p>\n

\n

Di\u00e1logos announces its inaugural title with the first appearance in English of this lyrical last volume in Nabile Far\u00e8s\u2019 great trilogy, La D\u00e9couverte du nouveau monde. An experimental work set in the time just after Algeria\u2019s war with France,\u00a0<\/span>Exile and Helplessness<\/em>\u00a0probes issues of identity\u2014race, gender, nationality\u2014in the wake of European colonialism.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are no easy answers. Just as Algeria itself has found only the most difficult paths after independence (paths glimpsed, in all their neocolonial cynicism, in\u00a0Exile and Helplessness<\/em>), and just as Far\u00e8s himself renounced a future in Algeria and many of his books could not, until just now, be published there, the protagonist of this exile is left with loss of purpose, shadows of loved ones, and a village that will never be the same.<\/p>\n

Far\u00e8s considered\u2014at a distance of 35 years from its 1976, Paris, publication\u2014a new title for his\u00a0L’Exil et le d\u00e9sarroi<\/em>. Exile and … “Hilflosikeit,” he finally sighed, over an intense bottle of Nero d’Avola. And we remember that\u2014along with his roles as poet, novelist, theater director, ethnologist and framer of the modern identity crisis\u2014Far\u00e8s is a psychoanalyst. “Hilflosikeit,” is German for “helplessness.”<\/p>\n

Opening the way for books like Tahar Djaout’sThe Bone Searchers<\/em>, this challenging and rewarding text, with Peter Thompson’s translation, is now available to the English-speaking world for the first time.<\/p>\n

The intensity and self-awareness in relation to its language, and its content\u2019s existential urgency, brings Nabile Far\u00e8s’ writing closer to the white heat of poetry than to the narrative leisure of the novel. This is writing as enactment and not as mere representation of something, a life, or a fact, say, historical or mental of that life. The immense pleasure in reading Far\u00e8s\u2019 work\u2014a pleasure that comes through in Peter Thompson’s excellent translation\u2014comes from the nomadicity of his language, thinking, doing, i.e. in what happens at any given moment all over the place\u2014if you let it. Let it happen to you: you\u2019ll be all the richer for it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Pierre Joris, author of the\u00a0University of California Book of North African Literature<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to learn to read between the lines of the sky, and of the tree, in the gaps that overflow with light and possibility.\u201d Peter Thompson\u2019s nimble and evocative translation brings to English readers the oracular intensity of Nabile Far\u00e8s\u2019s \u201cmultiple kind of speech.\u201d Exile and Helplessness is a risky dialectic of prose and poetry, distance and rootedness, words and body, the politics of living and dying, of the female and the male, of liberation, anguish and ecstasy.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Adam J. Sorkin<\/p>\n

\n

Exile and Helplessness (L’Exil et le d\u00e9sarroi) Nabile Far\u00e8s Translated by Peter Thompson ISBN 978-1935084181 140 pages: $15.00 October, 2012 Di\u00e1logos announces its inaugural title with the first appearance in English of this lyrical...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9313"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9325,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions\/9325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

\"\"Nabile Far\u00e8s was born in Collo, Algeria, in 1940.\u00a0 An activist, ethnologue and professional psychoanalyst, he has been a voice against colonialism in such poetics works as\u00a0Chant d\u2019Akli<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Escuchando tu historia<\/em>.\u00a0 His popular second novel,\u00a0A Passenger From The West<\/em>, was the first to be translated into English(2010).\u00a0\u00a0Exile and Helplessness<\/em>\u00a0(L’Exil et le d\u00e9sarroi<\/em>) is the third book of the trilogy\u00a0La D\u00e9couverte du nouveau monde,\u00a0<\/em>the other two volumes beingLe Champ des oliviers\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0La M\u00e9moire de l’absent<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Far\u00e8s lives in Paris. Long suppressed in his native Algeria, in 1994 he won the Kateb Yacine prize for lifetime achievement.
\n\"\"Peter Thompson teaches modern languages and literature at Roger Williams University. Recently he has translated L\u00e9on-Paul Fargue\u2019sPo\u00e8mes<\/em>\u00a0(2003), V\u00e9ronique Tadjo\u2019s first book of poetry,\u00a0Red Earth,<\/em>\u00a0(2006), and Nabile Far\u00e8s\u2019s\u00a0Hearing Your Story<\/em>\u00a0(2008) and\u00a0A Passenger From The West<\/em>\u00a0(2010), along with Nassira Azzouz\u2019s\u00a0The Gates of The Sun<\/em>\u00a0(2010). His translation of Tchicaya u Tam\u2019si\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0The Belly<\/em>\u2014the first full-length translation of Tchicaya\u2019s poetry\u2014appears in 2013.\u00a0 He has edited two anthologies of francophone literature, and edits\u00a0Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"