Traumatic Landscapes: Earthquakes and Identity in Franco-Algerian Fiction by Maissa Bey and Nina Bouraoui

Abstract

This article examines how two Algerian writers use the destruction of the landscape through “natural” disasters to reflect on trauma, memory, and the nature of sociocultural conditions of women in contemporary Algeria. In Maissa Bey’s Surtout ne te retourne pas (2005), the destruction wrought by the earthquake provides the novel’s protagonist with the crucial moment to restructure her identity and redefine her community, much as the population affected by the earthquake. In the case of Nina Bouraoui’s Le Jour du séisme (1999), the earthquake stands in as a symbol for the nostalgic chasm that exists between adulthood in France and the memory of childhood spent in Algeria. Opposing the breach in the landscape to cultural and psychological ruptures and geographical borders, both authors use the séisme to challenge hierarchies of trauma in the postcolonial setting.