Memories and violence in Fadila al-Faruq Ta’ al-khajal. Fiction as a tool to construct social memory

This article offers an overview of the Algerian women condition at the end of the twentieth century through the analysis of the novel Tā’ al-khajal (The Stigma of Shame/The Feminine Shame) by the Algerian writer Faḍīlah al-Fārūq. The work, set in Algeria in the 1990s, is a kind of diary written in the first person where the protagonist, a young journalist, Khālidah openly declares her love for her land and for the women of her land. Memories play a fundamental role in the articulation of the novel, but they do not always serve to remedy the trauma of the violence experienced: the writing of al-Fārūq becomes therefore a component of the construction of the social memory of her own country.