Algeria: Sarah Haidar’s Reflections on Conflict
Algeria: Sarah Haidar’s Reflections on Conflict

Summary/Abstract: This study explores the literary representations of conflict and the pivotal roles that the act of writing and the function of literature assume in Algerian writer Sarah Haidar’s fictional work Virgules en trombe (2013). Haidar denounces conflict in her homeland, characterizing it as a form of human insanity often originating from an individual internalization of shame and fear. In highlighting the hypocrisy and pettiness that lie at the basis of these conflicts, Haidar invites the reader to consider the oft-damaging results of human fallibility and calls for the envisioning of a new type of literature free of nationalistic and egotistical projections. Haidar’s original form of noir fiction embraces, reflects upon, expands, sublimates and evolves from conflict, often with gritty humor, thus suggesting that this new form of literature could be a medium through which the processes of healing and transformation can begin.

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