Narrative space as an expression of the theme of silence in three novels by Malika Mokeddem

Abstract EN

The Algerian Sahara is one of the most long-standing myths and motifs in literature.

This locus became the favorite geographical as well as cultural space in numerous reports and works by geographers, soldiers, explorers, adventurers, expeditors, poets, painters, and writers.

The present paper proposes to study the representation of Algerian Sahara in three novels by Malika Mokeddem.

The corpus includes Le Siècle des sauterelles (1992), L’Interdite (1993) and La nuit de la lézarde (1998).

Many researchers have explored the politics and poetics of space in Malika Mokeddem’s fiction; however, no one has commented on the use of the desert as an expression of silence.

The study demonstrates that Mokeddem used this space to express the unsayable and to deconstruct the colonial representation of the Algerian Sahara.