Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade (Emerging Voices (Quartet)) [Hardcover]

A friend of mine once said that this was her all-time favorite book in French, and though that might seem a bit hyperbolic, I've come to consider it as one of my favorites as well (in fact, I ended up writing my Master's thesis on it, 100 pages, all in French, about this book alone!). The English translation does lack something, so if you can read French, by all means read the original, "L'amour, la fantasia". Djebar is a fascinating person- writer, scholar, and award-winning filmmaker- and this is arguably her best novel. Wrestling a voice for herself from the colonizer's language (French), she also struggles with the cultural implications of "unveiling" herself through that same language to a primarily foreign audience. Her innovative approach to this problematic is to structure her novel like a musical piece (a "fantasia") with various "movements" (chapters alternating between her own autobiography, the history of the fight for control of Algeria, and the "voices" of illiterate women whose stories she's translated and transcribed). The "fantasia" is also a traditional North African equestrian ceremony, in which men parade their horses before going off to battle, and in which women participate on the sidelines, as it were, cheering on the men by ululating. Without giving away the full implications of this double analogy (and hence some key elements of the story), the "fantasia" takes the form, generally, of both the means by which some Algerian woman are able to speak, as well as that of their traditional marginalization in the patriarchal society of Algeria. Musicality, orality, and the written word blend in this highly original work to portray the author's fragmented sense of self, and the final product is rendered in a beautiful prose. If you're interested in sampling some of the finest writing by any French-speaking author today, or are fascinated by these kinds of postcolonial aesthetic problematics, read this book! It's a classic!

This is the first novel written by an Algerian, man or woman, that I have ever read. I suspect that could be true for many readers. As a new voice in my world of literature, then, it's an important book. I saw FANTASIA as a kaleidescope, though, always producing patterns and colors, always arranged, but not always understandable. I found it very hard to judge this work because it has many facets, like a shifted kaleidescope.

***** Five stars for the idea or conception of the novel, for language (if it is well-translated), for the whole effort of bringing a woman's perspective on colonialism, on revolutionary struggle, and on tradition. Djebar is obsessed with the "word", especially the written word and its strength. "The word is a torch; to be held up in front of the wall of separation or withdrawal..." Words preserve and pass on memories, tragedies, pain, love and lack of love. Words hold the keys to Algeria's past, the world shattered by the French invasion and conquest of the mid-19th century, when 25 years of war ruined the country. But the French conquerers wrote of it, much more than the Algerian defenders. Their words must be mined for the reality, we must forge the Algerian view from the 'ore'. Words again unite the Algerian women and men who fought France in the 1950s. But those very French words, the language of the conquerers and destroyers, are used to pass on here, in this novel, the very heartfelt, most intimate emotions of the author. She speaks of this. Perhaps silence is more powerful, implying resistance. "Writing does not silence the voice, but awakens it, above all to resurrect so many vanished sisters." Those are the sisters who didn't know French, who could not speak out from their cloistered existence.

****For bringing Algerian history to life from an Algerian perspective, and an Algerian woman's view at that, a woman who, through an educated father and schooling escaped the enclosed future that awaited her. The struggle, the never-ending resistance to the occupation of their land.

***The plot of a novel is a fishing line with some attractive hooks for catching readers. If this line is broken too often, no fish can be caught. The novel becomes a collection of beautiful fragments, leaving the reader to imagine what it could be if it were all joined somehow. FANTASIA suffers from a too intricate sub-division of the voices. It is a layered approach, the conflict between two worlds---a conflict that entered even into the author's soul--- it is effective poetically, but not as prose....we lose track of who is saying what, who is related to whom, where everyone fits in. Overall Djebar reaches us, but the novel has an abstract quality that does not emotionally involve us much with any characters.

Ethnically rich and inspiring in its descriptions, this 1985 collection of vignettes is an eye-opening look at a courageous North African country and people that have undergone an incredibly difficult history of colonization, war, and struggles against poverty, and oppression--of its women in particular. Assia Djebar is not easy to read in English translation much less in her original French. However, as I read the translation Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (original title: L'Amour, La Fantaisia), I realized I was actually doing both the author and myself a disservice. The French language is an integral part of this narrative because it brings out an ugly irony about colonization. One of Djebar's main themes that runs all through these varied stories on Algeria's difficult history is the oxymoron of communicating her passionately patriotic feelings for her country in the language of the conquerer/colonizer--France. So, why, then, didn't Djebar write the story of this painful history from 1830 to 1962 and beyond in Arabic? I believe she wanted her stories to reach a wider audience, particularly in France where she wished to remind readers of France's brutal treatment of her people in the mid-19th century and later during the bloody war in independence, 1954-62, as well as France's attempted absorption of the Algerian culture into its own. " . . . faced with the language of the former conquerer, which offer me its ornaments, its jewels, its flowers, I find they are flowers of death--chrysanthemums on tombs! (181) . . . This language was imported in the murky, obscure past, spoils taken from the enemy with whom no fond word was ever exchanged: French . . . . This language was formerly used to entomb my people; when I write it today, I feel like the messenger of old, who bore a sealed missive which might sentence him to death or to a dungeon" (215).
The collection of stories includes accounts of the original arrival of the French to Algeria's north Mediterranean shore in 1830, and provides vivid descriptions of the atrocities of the conquest--attempted genocide of Algerian tribes who hid in caves and died when French forces set fires outside the entrances to smoke them out. There are also tales of tragic outcomes of later 19th-century insurrections. (The Algerians did NOT want to be conquered by anyone!) Djebar also writes about her own childhood in the 1950s as well as tales of the painful aftermath of the independence for various widows and children.
The book begins and ends with the image Djebar had of herself as a small girl being led to a French school by her father, who had been privileged to receive an education and secure a position as a teacher at that school. He wanted to give young Assia the same advantage of education, the French language, and freedom from the Muslim veil that her young cousins were already forced to wear. But with privilege came guilt and irony. "At the age when I should be veiled already, I can still move about freely, thanks to the French school. . . Unlike [my classmates:] who haven't got cousins who do not show their ankles or their arms, who do not even expose their faces. My panic is also compounded by an Arab woman's 'shame.' The French girls whirl around me; they do not suspect that my body is caught in invisible snares" (179).
This collection is much more than just a self-analysis of Djebar's own identy. It's a whole saga of a country's centuries-long struggle to seize and maintin its identity and unique character despite its tragedy-laced history. As I said, not simple to read, but well worth the journey through Djebar's peculiar mode of expression.