Lovers of Caravaggio, Flaubert and Mozart, Zadig Hamroune delivers with The barbaric night a lyrical autobiographical novel, structured as a substitute for impressionist frescoes where the images have the color of feelings. The barbaric night is the third novel from the pen of this Franco-Algerian, passionate about poetry and writing.
“ I was humming happily on the way to college. The inner voice is unruly. She accompanies us, hums, makes our scattered thoughts rhyme, prints her phrasing on the space between reality and being (…). Muted, then suddenly belching, another voice interposed : “Scraping, bitch, tantouze. You’re just a piece of shit I hurried on. I plugged my ears but the voice was imperious. I could no longer create a diversion with my queer songs, my decoys. »
Can one be Arab and queer, wonders the young Lyazid, who grew up in the Normandy countryside, not far from Caen. Lyazid is the hero-narrator of The barbaric nighta poignant autobiographical novel by the Algerian Zadig Hamroune.
The barbaric night is a Bildungsroman, modeled on the Words Sartreans or The age of man by Michel Leiris. This novel, whose action takes place in the 1970s in the town of Hérouville Saint-Clair, recounts the learning of life by the central character, torn between his double culture and desperately seeking to unravel the mystery of his carnal desires. for men.
It is in tears and through hand-to-hand combat that the education of the adolescent takes place. He doesn’t like his chubby body and is ashamed of his unmanly behavior. He takes refuge in literature and art, hoping to find answers to the questions he asks about society, about his sexual identity and about life in general. “ I wanted to tell, explains the author, the journey, a kind of redemption through art, literature, music, dance, opera, art in general. Painting too, of course, since there are many references to Caravaggio, who I consider to be my alter ego. I want to tell the story of this child who felt uncomfortable in his native environment, who felt like a defector before changing social class and who aspired to something else. This child has experienced trauma, violence… »
A sovereign mother
The Hamrounes are an Algerian family, originally from deep Kabylie, settled in France since 1945 for the father and 1958 for the mother. The father was a worker at Renault and the mother a housewife and storyteller in her spare time. The son rose to prominence in 2015 by publishing his first novel, The Bread of Exile, a fictionalized biography of his parents. After a second novel, more historical, entitled The Mirror of Princes (2019), the writer returned in his new novel to the story of his family and his personal story. The mother occupies a preponderant place.
“ I always had the impression of writing for someone or in place of someone, in place of my mother for example, who was an oral storyteller. My mother also chose me to some extent for this role since very early on she chose me as administrative secretary for everyday documents, but also for her correspondence, since when she wrote letters, she asked me to write them down. And I don’t know why she chose me. Me, maybe I was the most available and we had a lot of affinities, but I think her essential criterion was the fact that, not knowing how to write herself, she… »
The barbaric night opens on the mother, this totally illiterate woman, but reigning supreme over her vast tribe, made up of her husband and her nine children. “ It was in her image that I imagined the Kahina, our heroic warrior queen at the head of her troops… writes the son, transfixed with admiration.
“ Norman by adoption and Kabyle by instinct »
Dual culture is the second major theme of this novel, embodied by the narrator, Lyazid, the author’s double. “ His mother’s favorite who swears only by his Kabyle culture, he is paradoxically the one who will go the furthest in the exploration of otherness.
The man likes to proclaim himself Norman by adoption and Kabyle by instinct “. He memorizes the first lines of salammbô “ to imbibe it permanently he reads the Bible and frequents museums to enter into communion with artists.
The turning point in his quest will be a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen, where he discovers the work of Caravaggio, the painter of shadows. Shaken by the life and work of this angry and suffering soul brother, the young Kabyle made the tormented art of the painter of four centuries ago the model for his own work to come.
In the meantime, will he find there the strength to free himself from the barbaric night of daily abuse and violence he faces in the family microcosm of Hérouville Saint-Clair that has become his prison ? This is the question with which this beautiful novel of resilience and restrained emotion ends.
The barbaric night, by Zadig Hamroune. Editions Emmanuelle Collas, 180 pages, 18 euros.