Yasimina Khadra. L'imposture des mots.

Cordova, Sarah Davies

Paris. Julliard. 2002. 177 pages. 16.60 [euro]. ISBN 2-260-01594-8

MOHAMMED MOULESSEHOUL no longer needs to exploit his wife's name, Yasmina Khadra, to sign his novels in order to protect his identity. It can now serve literally as a pen name. Indeed, since the publication of L'ecrivain (see WLT 75:3-4, p. 113), the author-protagonist has left his position of commanding officer in the Algerian army to dedicate himself to his literary vocation. The birth of his daughter Hasnia on his forty-fifth birthday engendered the catalyst for the first independent step In the life of a man who has always followed his father's and the army's dictates.

Whereas the autobiographical Bildungsroman L'ecrivain recounts Moulessehoul's childhood and ends with his induction into the Algerian army, L'imposture des mots skips over his military career, which could be read about between the lines of the seven polars (police procedural novels) Khadra has written, to pick up on the closing notion of "on ne m'a jamais appris a etre moi," enunciated in the first volume of this character's life. L'imposture des mots recounts, on the one hand, the author's response to L'ecrivain's reception, which, to his chagrin, ignored its literary merits to focus on the former military man's avowal and political stance vis-a-vis the Algerian army. On the other, the narrative traces the voyage of a man who has lost his habitual benchmarks since deciding to be a full-time writer and who is living the difficult transition from institutionalized and governed person to independent self-motivated individual. At a loss for words, for understanding, as well as for a subjectivity with which he can live, the author-narrator grasps at the paradox of his situation.

The text oscillates between autobiography and fictional author-graphy, with its inclusion of conversations with historical and contemporary personalities, along with a series of hallucinatory dialogues with fictional characters from the author's and other writers' narratives. As the narrator/author-protagonist attempts to bridge these existential schisms, the life he has always dreamed of turns nightmarish: the most virulent of his characters from his polars come forth asking to be reincarnated; others give advice; and Khadra witnesses a fight between Zarathustra and Nietzsche. Always on the move, and yet often waiting in stations and airports, the protagonist Khadra wrestles with his old self, Moulessehoul, in this seemingly burlesque quest.

As author, narrator, and protagonist split, drift, and switch positions, they inhabit liminalities that reference contemporary debates about the truth-value of autobiographies. Whereas in L'ecrivain the narrator adheres to the autobiographical pact in the inscription of his lifelong desire to become a writer, the itinerary of L'imposture des roots allows the author to come to terms with the persona he had thought he had left behind and to reconcile himself with his new existence. Thus, L'imposture des roots incarnates the true nature of a Bildungsroman even as Khadra scrambles the clues, not to compose a mystery novel, but to assert the lure of the literary world: the imposture of words.

Sarah Davies Cordova

Marquette University