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Habib Selmi

Habib Selmi tijdens Bluff Your Way into Arabic Literature in Theater aan het Spui in Den Haag, op zaterdagmiddag 19 januari in Winternachten 2008 - foto Serge Ligtenberg
Habib Selmi tijdens Bluff Your Way into Arabic Literature in Theater aan het Spui in Den Haag, op zaterdagmiddag 19 januari in Winternachten 2008 - foto Serge Ligtenberg

(1951, Tunesia) belongs to the very few Tunesian authors writing in Arabic. A conscious choice, because although fluent in French, he doens't feel at home in French literature. He could never write a French novel, he said in an interview with the literary magazine Banipal. Le-mont-des-chèvres (1999) is a short, poetic, but sometimes grim novella about a conflict between a teacher and the most important dignitary of a small Tunesian village. The teacher symbolises the intellectual and the dignitary power. Les amoureux de Bayya (2003) is his best known work. Selmi's work is characterized by austerity. 'A novel mustn't be a tale or a myth full of characters and events,' he said in the same interview in Banipal. Selmi has lived in Paris since 1985, where he is a university lecturer. He has published four novels and two collections of short stories. His books have been translated in English, French, Hebrew and Norwegian.

(WIN2008)

Archive available for: Habib Selmi

  • Winternachten 2008

    Shabandar Café - Grand Café Oriental

    With: Ahmed Alaidy, Ashur Etwebi, Habib Selmi, Hassan Daoud, Hatem Bourial, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Khaled Khalifa, Laila Aboezaid, Lamis Saidi, Tamim al-Barghouti, Youssouf Amine Elalamy

    Shabandar Café is a programme by Gemak, the new centre for western and non-western art, politics and debate, of The Hague Gemeentemuseum and the Vrije Academie. With Shabandar Café Gemak links up with the Winternachten festival. Gemak is named after the famous meeting place of artists and intellectuals in Bagdad. Enjoy the most refined forms of Iraqi culture: live classical Arab Moqam music, an Iraqi storyteller and poetr, a short Iraqi documentary on Café Shabandar, tea and the tastiest Iraqi snacks.

    The exhisition space of Gemak has been decorated for the occasion in that of the original café, destroyed in March 2007. Honorary guests: the Arab writers taking part in festival Winternachten. An English-Arabic language programme, compiled by the Iraqi visual artist Rashad Selim.
    For more information on the programme see www.gemak.org. In English and Arabic

    Shabandar is the name of a café on Al Mutanabi Street
    where for decades Baghdad's cultural elites met
    discussing books, poetry and politics
    or dropping in for a coffee after visiting the book vendors' stalls
    on the busy street outside

    Everybody interested in books came here
    to buy them in the good years
    to sell them during the sanctions
    to be transported by their covers
    if they were penniless

    On the 5th of March 2007
    one car bomb attack among many
    destroyed Shabandar
    and the book market outside

    Shabandar Café has left Baghdad
    even if its walls are rebuilt
    5000 years of urban culture
    scattered to the four corners of the Earth