Join the Banipal Book Club for a discussion of ‘Sarajevo Firewood’ by Algerian writer Saïd Khatibi, featuring its translator Paul Starkey.
Read moreSaid Khatibi on the Entanglements of Story in Bosnia and Algeria
“When the war began in Sarajevo I was a child. I was in southern Algeria then. We sang songs in school about the children of Sarajevo, and we saw pictures of what was happening there on TV.”
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‘Firewood of Sarajevo’: Testimonies against Amnesia and for an Alternative History
The novel was inspired, in part, by a 2018 workshop organized by me and Cherifa Kheddar, Director of the NGO Djazairouna, where we brought together survivors of the Algerian Civil war with writers, artists, psychologists, filmmakers and journalists. The objective was to translate first-hand testimonies into different media, including literature.
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