 Terror
and Fundamentalism
Literary Reading by
Slimane Benaïssa
September 23, 2004 - 5:00 pm
Claude Pepper Auditorium
FSU
Playwright, actor,
and director Slimane Benaïssa examines the events of
9/11 and the relations between Islam and the West in his
novel La Dernière Nuit d’un damné
(Plon, 2003), which gives a human face to terrorism through
the character of a young Arab American man in search of
spiritual and cultural identity. With extensive quotations
from the Koran, it explores the terrifying logic of the
suicide bomber. The novel won France’s Prix Méditerranée
in 2003. Copies of the English translation, The Last
Night of a Damned Soul (Grove Press, 2004), have been
ordered for the FSU bookstore on Woodward Street. Benaïssa
will read from an answer questions on the novel in French
on September 23.
Born in Algeria, Slimane Benaïssa has a multicultural
heritage (Berber, Arabic, and French). He has resided in
France since 1993 when terrorist threats forced him to leave
Algeria, and he now writes and performs in French. He has
won awards for his theatre, and in 2000 President Chirac
named him to the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie.
In over a dozen plays, three novels, and numerous conferences
and workshops, Benaïssa confronts the world of political
violence and religious intolerance by presenting both sides
of complex and controversial topics such as terrorism, torture,
Arab-Israeli relations, and the wearing of the veil.
Trained in math and electrical engineering
but drawn to literary studies, Benaïssa discovered
theatre in Algeria in the early 1970s. He adapted and
translated plays by Brecht, Aeschylus, and most notably
Kateb Yacine from French into dialectical Arabic. As an
actor he performed widely throughout Algeria and founded
Algeria's first independent theatre troupe. His visit
to FSU has been arranged by the Winthrop-King Institute
for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies in conjunction
with Grinnell Gollege, sponsor of M. Benaïssa's visit
to the United States, and with FSU's Middle East Center.
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For more information contact:
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida
State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1540 Telephone 850.644.7636
Fax 850.644.9917 E-mail icffs@mailer.fsu.edu
Website www.fsu.edu/~icffs |
