Kateb Yacine Biography and latest books by Kateb Yacine

Kateb Yacine was born in Constantine to an old and highly-educated Berber family from Sedrata in western Souk Ahras in Algeria. His grandfather was a deputy judge while his father was a lawyer. His name was Yacine Kateb; however, his teachers addressed him as Kateb. Therefore he adopted Kateb Yacine as his name while writing. He published a collection of poems ‘Soliloques’ when he was 17. He attended a French school in Little Kabylie and then attended the colonial college in Setif as a boarder. During the Algerian demonstrations in 1945, he participated in the demonstrations in which a couple of protestors were killed. He was jailed for two months during which he became a loyal supporter of the Algerian nationalist movement.

Kateb read William Faulkner, Comte de Lautréamont, and Charles Baudelaire. He was greatly influenced by Faulkner. He worked as a journalist in Alger Républicain and joined the Communist Party in France. He reported from Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Under the pseudonym of Said Lamri, he wrote an article on the ‘swindling’ of Mecca. In France, he published Nedjma ou le Poème du Couteau. He interacted with leading literary figures such as Bertold Brecht, M\'hamed Issiakhem, and Malek Haddad. Nedjma followed as his most popular piece of work and she dominated his writings as the core of his literary vision. She was his cousin and he loved her.

During the Algerian War of Independence, Kateb was forced to live in the former USSR, former Yugoslavia, Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy. He was criticized for his emphasis on the Berber tradition and the Tamazight language, and his stand on gender equality. He was not allowed to appear on television. When he died, he left an uncompleted piece of the 1988 Algerian riots. He wrote in French, Tamazight, and Arabic.