The Beur novel – classification of an emerging literary and cultural space through a textual analysis of Ferrudja Kessas’ Beur’s Story

Abstract

This research paper attempts to classify the writing of second generation French authors of North-African origin, born of Maghrebian immigrants in France. The literature belonging to this group of writers is prevalent from the 1980s to the present day. It is a literary production that has the merit of being a major part of the evolution of the phenomenon related to what is called ‘migrant literature’. The collection of works by the above mentioned writers, spread out over the last four decades, is distinguished by a remarkable innovation, and often even by a total reversal of known models, since the

emergence of what has commonly been called franco-maghrebian literature, which is writing in French by authors of Maghrebian origin, in particular the countries of the Central Maghreb, including Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The objective of this paper is to give an account of the significant evolution which established or rather clarified major changes to this kind of writing, testifying to active and significant points of transformation in the lives of the writers, taking into focus Ferrudja Kessas' novel entitled “Beur's Story”, considered to be an autobiographical account of the writer’s own life.