Restor(y)ing the Postcolonial Algerian Na(rra)tion in the Fiction of Ahlam Mosteghanemi

Abstract

The thesis examines Ahlam Mosteghanemi, the first acknowledged Arabophone woman novelist in Algeria, and her fiction from postcolonial, contextual and gender lenses. It situates the author within the (con)text of Algeria’s postcolonial na(rra)tions, official or literary, which were both marked by episodes of subordination given Algeria’s colonial history. It will show how the author adopted the tactics of disruption, transgression, masquerading and remapping to intervene in hegemonic na(rra)tions, by highlighting cracks in supposedly finished discourses on the postcolonial imagi/nation while skating over essentialisation. It concludes that the studied novels are direct restor(y)ings of the postcolonial na(rra)tion, imagined at both the official and literary levels of the na(rra)tion.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Joseph McGonagle (Supervisor) & Zahia Smail Salhi (Supervisor)