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Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Abstract

In this study of Rachid Boudjedra’s La vie à l’endroit, I will show how the Algerian writer endeavours to put “en abyme” three types of madness (joyful, fatal, hallucinatory); these generate one another in a cause and effect relationship and distance themselves from the delirious discourse of his first novels in order to give an account of a period of terror which struck Algeria under the Muslim fundamentalist threat. We will also show how the character-narrator faces all this madness by setting up his subj bj ectivity as a shield against what he calls “external fear and inner fear”, and by reactivating his imaginary to deaden a violent reality and to overcome the demons of the past. Thus, madness, subjectivity and imaginary impact the narrative space of La vie à l’endroit and make it a subversive and provocative novel, a novel of life and death.

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