ABSTRACT
Philosophical discourses describe the necessity for an emphasis on cultural and linguistic confrontation and interaction, but literary texts by North African immigrants living in France form an exemplary site where different voices or systems can themselves be actively asserted and juxtaposed. The North African writers Rachid Boudjedra and Tahar Ben Jelloun describe the experiences of the 'first generation' of immigrants arriving in France in the early 1970s, frequently to work in industry. These writers concentrate on the ways in which some immigrants neither retain strong ties with their countries of origin nor fully integrate into metropolitan French culture. Ben Jelloun and Boudjedra offer a critique of common binary structures, but some of their depictions of France and North Africa risk perpetuating these stereotypes, despite the authors' efforts to exploit the multi-layered nature of literary discourse and to leave their conclusions open-ended. Boudjedra and Ben Jelloun's novels are, on one level, deeply anchored in a set of pressing contemporary political concerns.
