Mohammed Dib

(1920-2003) was a writer born in Tlemcen, Algeria. He was partly schooled in Oudja, just across the frontier in Morocco. He began writing poems and painting at an early age. During the 1940s he worked as a teacher, accountant, interpreter (English/French) and designer. He worked as a journalist on Alger Républicain in 1951. Dib first went to Paris in 1952 when the first volume of his great trilogy appeared. In 1955 he signed the manifesto Fraternité algérienne and his militant activities led to his expulsion from Algeria in 1959 by the colonial authorities. He settled permanently in France in 1964 and this marked a new trend in his writing. He published numerous novels, collections of short stories, books of poems, children’s tales, all imbued with nostalgia for his lost land.