ABSTRACT
As current events bring the world to focus more and more on Arab and Islamic cultures, popular fiction and non-fiction written by and about women from the Middle East and North Africa have seen a rise in publication.1 Throughout the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century there has been a veritable boom in the publishing of Algerian writing in France. The cultural television programme, Bouillon de Culture, hosted by Bernard Pivot, aired on 18 April 1997 with the theme of Algerian resistance. The popular host’s selected bibliography included works by Khalida Messaoudi, political and feminist activist, and Leïla Sebbar, a ‘beur’2 fiction writer. In 1999 the large multimedia chain, FNAC, featured books by Algerian writers, CDs by various beurs and magazines focusing on contemporary Algeria. 2002 marked the 40th anniversary of the end of the Algerian war for independence from the French and also saw the release of numerous commemorative television programmes, special editions of magazines and memoirs. Thus, the North African country of Algeria has for the last two decades been a primary source for texts in France, and with subsequent translations, its presence has been pervasive on the international market. In spite of the numerous books treating the subject of Algerian women, the presentation of these women to the Western literary public remains a relatively complicated task. Undoubtedly many reasons exist that explain the difficulty of such a charge, but one particularly problematic element resides in the paratext of certain publications having Algerian women as their subject. Gérard Genette defines the paratext in the following manner:
In this discussion I will explore the paratextual elements, primarily the front covers of books, that are used as the immediate means of presenting Algerian women’s writing to the Western literary market and examine the implications these marketing techniques have on the reception of the works. Specifically I have chosen four paperbacks that have experienced relative success in France and abroad, represent thematic trends in Algerian fictional writing and whose authors are either Algerian women or somehow directly tied to Algeria. Examining these particular four texts and their covers will ultimately lead to a broader analysis of the target audience and the way in which these books are received in relation to their covers.
