The Review of Contemporary Fiction

So Vast the Prison by Assia Djebar. Trans. Betsy Wing
Chad W. Post

Assia Djebar. So Vast the Prison. Trans. Betsy Wing. Seven Stories, 2001. 363 pp. Paper: $16.95.

The fragmented narrative of So Vast the Prison offers spaces of light-views between the bars, the breaks between segments. Ostensibly, Isma, called "the name," narrates the novel, which relates her autobiography, her family history-especially the women’s side-and Algerian/Islamic history. The narration begins with the platonic love Isma has for a young journalist, "the Beloved." This story serves as the seed for the first narrative-Isma’s repudiation by/of her husband, who attempts to blind her by beating her badly with a broken whiskey bottle, and her life to follow-and also as the seed for the imagery, repetitive occurrences, parallels in character and action in the rest of the novel. The magic of the book presents itself first in the recollection of "the Beloved," who is raised from the ruins of the past ten years after the brief summer of acquaintance. Then family history, moments of autobiography, and stages of the historical past rise into sharp focus in passages that detail the most minute factual matter yet fix nothing fast. The importance of movement, especially for the women of the family but also out of the Berber tradition, reflects the desire for and movement toward "freedom," though, as the deaths of Isma’s friends at home while she lives in France suggest, the prison-of consciousness, of memory-is vast. Ms. Djebar has a formidable intellect, a sure aesthetic sense, and a complex emotional involvement with the present life and history of Algeria. Reverberations of Baudelaire, references to Don Quixote, Alain-Fournier, Rivière, Camus, only hint at the fertile depths beneath this work. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in experimental, cinematic fiction. [Richard Murphy]