Source: Univ of NOLA Press

Here's a short recent interview with Algerian author Nabile Farès, whose works have recently been published by the University of New Orleans Press:

UNOP: You could be described as a political writer-certainly as an "engaged"one; current politics don't leave you depressed?

NF: Success in the political arts requires transcending the conflicts and heritages that have weighed us down, both in civil wars and in international onesŠ Taking charge of the future of a people, of a nation, is also a kind of
relieving, a "going beyond," the sufferings, tortures, injustices of the past-even if this past is still close to us.

UNOP: Since your next publication (Hearing Your Story) is also the first English translation of your work, perhaps you could say something about the American presidential election?

NF: Today, the United States-and how I love in these United States the open possibility of a presidential election that could transform the racist mentalities that have caused, still cause and will cause again so much harm to
humanity-enters onto a new path toward the future, characterized by a going-beyond the differences, segregations, apartheids, violences, ignorances and vengeances of history.

UNOP: You've been watching closely.

NF: If you followed the evolving Democratic Convention in the US you saw the enthusiasm, the credibility, the weight, the un-feigned joy that surrounded the nomination of Barak Obama for the future presidency. And, without being a US citizen, for the first time I accepted and understood the slogan "I Love The USA," not for her pretensions to leadership which often turn out catastrophic, but for this present moment which puts into play a new history for the US: a "future history" let us hope different from the pangs of anguish, the sequelae, of the past.

(translated from French by Peter Thompson)

Nabile Farès is an Algerian novelist , poet, and psychoanalyst, living in Paris. Born in 1940, he participated in the Algerian War of Independence. Novels include Yahia, Pas-de-chance (1970), and poetry includes Escuchando tu historia (Hearing Your Story), 1979.