Entretiens avec Boualem Sansal et Yasmina Khadra

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Notes on contributors

Brigitte Tsobgny

Brigitte Tsobgny is a Doctoral Candidate in French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University. After a Ph.D. in physical sciences at Université de Bordeaux I in 1989 and two years of postdoctoral studies in Germany (Alexander von Humboldt scholarship), Brigitte Tsobgny worked in the research and development of new materials in the manufacturing industry. She then taught physics and chemistry at Université Saint-Denis-de-la-Réunion. After three years in Reunion Island, she returned to Europe where she taught mathematics and physics in professional schools. Brigitte Tsobgny's research interests are nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century French and Francophone literature, especially in ecocriticism. Currently, Brigitte Tsobgny’s research focuses on the writing of French authors Michaël Ferrier and Thomas Reverdy. She is also interested in the works of Émile Zola, the Haitian author Jean-Claude Charles, the Algerian writers Boualem Sansal and Yasmina Khadra, and the Franco-Ivorian writer Véronique Tadjo.

Boualem Sansal

Boualem Sansal's The German Mujahid (Europa, 2009), won the RTL Reader's Prize for Fiction in France. His fiction and essays have been systematically censored in Algeria, his native country due to their criticism of the government. He has been awarded the Prix du Roman Arabe in 2012 and the German Peace Prize in 2011. 2084: The End of the World, his seventh novel, won the French Academy's Grand Prix for Fiction. Since the publication of Poste restante: Alger. Lettre de colère et d'espoir à mes compatriotes in 2006, Sansal's books have been banned in Algeria.

Yasmina Khadra

Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of the former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul. He is the author of numerous novels, ranging from Morituri (1997, the first of the Inspector Llob series) to Khalil (2018) awarded the Grand Prix of Litterary Associations. Khadra took the feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by military censors while he was still in the army. He lives in Aix-en-Provence, France.